


Our Love Is Like A Warning Sign

by brokenhighways



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Doctor AU, Drama, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mystery, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 22:00:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenhighways/pseuds/brokenhighways
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When resident doctor Jared Padalecki returns to the hospital after a year's absence, Jensen isn't prepared for the events that are about to occur. And he definitely isn't prepared for a mysterious person to reveal via email that Jared filed a harassment charge against his ex-mentor Jeff Morgan, who also happens to be Jensen's ex-boyfriend. From the incriminating emails to his growing attraction to Jared, Jensen's life is thrown into chaos. Eventually he becomes obsessed with identifying the person. It's a dangerous path that threatens to destroy his already troubled relationship with Jared, but Jensen's not willing to let it go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [spn_j2_bigbang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/). Title is from Moment We Come Alive by RED.

  
  
  
  


Dr. Jensen Ackles carefully reviews his patient files in between bites of his turkey sub.  As he flips through the charts, he pauses on a patient whom he had successfully operated on just this morning.  While Jensen is normally a humble, reserved professional, he can’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment and pride.  He had saved a life. Being a doctor was something he dreamed of since he was an eight year old and his father had been rushed to the emergency room after a terrifying car accident.  Jensen closed his eyes.  He could see his father clearly in his memory: smiling as Jensen burst into his hospital room, his young eyes wide with joy and relief.

He had decided then and there, all those years ago, that he would do whatever it took to become like the doctors who had saved his father’s life. Jensen transformed himself into the hyper-vigilant, disciplined, and highly respected surgeon he was today. He settled at a teaching hospital in Maine (mainly because it wasn’t Texas), and decided that he wanted to be a cardiac surgeon. Living in another state had been refreshing at first, but as the weeks passed, it became more difficult. The work was gruelling, no matter how rewarding it could be.  At times, Jensen felt lonely.  He had no one to call after he saved a patient; no one to kick back and have a quiet beer with when he lost a patient. Luckily for Jensen, he eventually struck up a friendship with a trainee nurse, Chris, who was loud, rash and everything that Jensen was not. Naturally, they got on like a house on fire and became close – if not best – friends.

He’s about halfway through his turkey sub when Jeff Morgan pops his head into his office, jolting Jensen out of memory lane. Jeff has got a small duffel bag slung over his shoulder, and aviator sunglasses perched upon his head. It’s not unusual for Jeff to visit his office at lunchtime, yet something feels off. Given that they are exes, and that he knows Jeff far too well, Jensen doesn’t question his gut. Jensen and Jeff were together for a couple of years until things fell apart. Jensen liked to pretend that he couldn’t really pinpoint why, which was probably they hadn’t worked.

For a second, Jensen feels a little stab of jealousy in his chest because Jeff always looks so  _happy_  without him. It shouldn’t bother him, but it does and Jensen hates that. While he’d kind of regressed relationship-wise after their break-up, Jeff flourished and did not seem fazed or bereft by it at all. For the longest time, Jensen’s nights, post-Jeff, revolved around tubs of ice cream and trashy television, whereas Jeff seemed to be partying all time (if the gossip that Chris shared with him was to be believed).  
  
"Take a good look at this face,” Jeff says with a smile. "Cause I've hit the big time, baby. I'm going to Vegas!" Jensen frowns at him, and takes a swig of his orange juice. He has no idea what Jeff is talking about so he doesn't respond. Jeff knows Jensen well enough to know that he won't comment without a full explanation.  
  
"I'm leaving," Jeff admits. "Got offered a job at a research institute in Nevada."  
  
Jensen can’t help snorting loudly. The only reason why Jeff would accept a research job was if he was fired from his job at the hospital. The realisation dawns on him quickly and Jensen looks up to see Jeff giving him a guarded look. Jensen sighs, places his sandwich down, and clears his throat.  
  
"What did you do?" He asks. An annoyed looks flits across Jeff's face but Jensen knows that he's well within his rights to ask. Lord knows that Jeff pulled all kinds of crap when they'd been dating, the excessive drinking and sleeping around. Jeff doesn't answer him; he just shrugs and, within a few seconds, he's gone. Of course, Jeff had never answered for his transgressions before, so Jensen doesn’t expect him to start now, and he can’t find it in himself to be bothered. Moments later, his door opens again and Danneel Harris - one of the orthopedic surgeons at the hospital - walks in. The twinkle in her eye tells Jensen that she's here to gossip, and a rueful smile forms on his lips.  
  
It’s funny because, he’s used to being the last one to know things.  
  
"We've set up a betting pool," she says, presenting him with a crumpled piece of paper. "We’re picking reasons why Jeff’s position at the hospital became  _untenable_."  
  
Jensen's pretty sure that his pager going off at the exact moment is a sign that divine intervention exists.

  
Jensen doesn’t realise that everything’s gone to shit until three hours later when he checks his email. His inbox is full of the usual innocuous official emails, shift-swap requests and bulletins. His inbox is full of the usual innocuous official e-mails, shift-swap requests and bulletins. The one that catches his eye is titled:  _Ever wonder what happened to Jared Padalecki?_ Jensen is mildly curious to see the contents because he had been discussing Jared just yesterday. Plus, he actually has wondered what happened to Jared. Jared was a year away from completing his residency when he just up and left without a word.  
  
No one had known why.  
  
However, Jared’s father, Dr. George Padalecki, a member of the hospital board, had announced last week that Jared would be returning to complete his last year. It struck Jensen as odd because he'd always figured that Jared had been pushed into medicine, and, like many others before him, had simply lost either the interest or the will to continue.  
  
Jensen begins to read the email, and soon feels blood draining from his face.  
  


  
The worst part is that Jensen can see it. He can see Jeff coming onto Jared, being rebuffed and trying again anyway. With a heavy sigh, Jensen pinches the bridge of his nose as the text messages from his colleagues begin to pop up on his phone.  
  
>  _Please, I bet the kid made this shit up_  
  
>  _Omg! Jeff is terrible_.  
  
>  _Who the fuck is medical meddler? Someone bn watching 2 much Gossip Girl._  
  
>  _Jensen, you okay?_  
  
The last one is from Chris. Talking to him will help, Jensen thinks. He grabs his keys and his pager and begins to head down to the ward. He steps out into the hallway, the sound of his sneakers squeaking against the linoleum makes him grimace, and his irritation builds. After locking his office door, he makes his way to the elevator, eyes downwards, while he texts Chris back. He hears the elevator doors ping and slide open just as he gets there. He steps forward only to crash into what feels like a brick wall. Pain reverberates around his chest, and he feels a pair of hands on his shoulders.  
  
"I'm so sorry, Dr. Ackles," a voice is saying. "Are you hurt?" It takes a few seconds for the voice to register, but when it does, Jensen shrugs the hands off, and takes a few steps back; he sees that the voice belongs to Jared Padalecki. It’s a little too much for him to process so Jensen stands there silently, watching Jared regard him curiously with his brow furrowed.  
  
"I-I'm fine," Jensen stammers eventually. "It was my fault." Padalecki smiles at him sheepishly and Jensen wonders if any amount of awkwardness can top what he feels now.  
  
"Actually, I'm up here to talk to you about what I'll be doing tomorrow." Jensen freezes. Shit.  
  
"I can come back another time if you're busy?" Jared says and Jensen nods. If Jared stays in the hospital any longer, someone will end up confronting him about the email. Jensen really doesn’t want to be around when that happens.  
  
"Thanks Jared. Tomorrow will be fine. That way you can observe my rounds to get a feel for it again." Jared nods eagerly, and Jensen can’t help thinking that he has a really nice smile. He promptly tries to erase the thought from his head, because it is all sorts of inappropriate right now. They make it down to the first floor exit just before Doctors Tom and Chad catch up with them. Jensen can see the anger on Tom's face and he sighs.  
  
 _Great._  
  
Chad’s only been working here for about a year or so, but Tom’s been a surgeon here longer than Jensen has. They’re not exactly friends. Chad’s more of an acquaintance and Tom’s a Grade A asshole (not that Jensen would ever divulge his opinion in public).  
  
"What the hell, Jared?!" Tom spits out, and Jared turns, with a confused look on his face. It morphs into a pleased smile when he sees Tom and Chad. Jensen ignores the warm feeling that stirs inside his stomach. He reminds himself that he got over his stupid crush (if you can even call it that) on Jared even before he vanished. Jensen watches as Jared steps forward.  
  
"Tom! Chad! It's good to see you guys again," Jared says. "How've you been?" Tom shoves Jared backwards, and he jabs a finger in front of Jared's face.  
  
"Why would you tell those lies about Jeff?" he snarls. "Was it revenge for him giving you the bad report? He was doing his  _job_!" Jared looks crestfallen as Tom glares at him. Jensen steps forward as well, deciding to exercise his seniority. "Welling, that's enough. I suggest you get back to your patients." With one last glare, Tom stalks away, leaving an upset-looking Chad behind.  
  
"I've got your back, man," Chad says and Jared frowns.  
  
"Thanks but...how did he find out? My dad said that no one would know." Jared sounds so lost that Jensen pulls up the email on his phone and shows it to him. Chad shoots Jensen an icy look, and Jensen is surprised. He’s not aware of any tension between him and Chad. Jensen knows that Jared and Chad had been close when they first started their rotations here, and it seems they had remained friends throughout Jared's disappearance. Before he can think about it further, Jared shoves the phone back in Jensen’s hand and quickly walks out of the hospital.  
  
“You better go after him,” Chad says as he stands beside Jensen and watches Jared get further and further away, “because if anything happens to him, his Dad will be out for blood.” Chad’s gone before Jensen can ask him what that means, and, with another grimace, Jensen pockets his phone and jogs out of the building.

  
He finds Jared after a half hour in the small park a few streets away, perched on a swing that’s moving precariously under his massive frame. He’s holding a brown paper bag and Jensen can see him swigging from a bottle hidden inside. Jared practically falls over as Jensen approaches him, and Jensen wonders what he did to deserve this.  
  
“How much of this have you had?” he asks once he catches a whiff of the vodka. He’s holding Jared up, and he is practically melded to Jensen’s side. Jared tries to shrug, but he apparently mistakes his shoulders for his elbows, and Jensen’s stomach bears the brunt. Jensen grits his teeth, drags Jared over to a nearby bench, and settles him down.  
  
“Look, give me a couple of minutes to call your Dad and he’ll get you out of here,” he says, because Chad has still got a few hours left on his shift. Jensen doesn’t think it is a good idea for him to be caught being anything less than professional with Jared. Not until he’s had a chance to speak to Jeff anyway.  
  
“N-no,” Jared says as he snaps to back to reality. “I-I…my Dad can’t see me like this, okay? Just, I don’t know, I’ll sleep it off in the on call room or something. You won’t tell will you?” Jensen frowns; he can sense a story there, but he knows that it’s none of his business. Of course that doesn’t explain the next words out of his mouth.  
  
“I’m off right now and I don’t need to be in until tomorrow morning. You can crash at my place.”  
  
Jared gives him a wondrous, yet drunken smile, and Jensen knows that he’s in trouble.

  
By the time Jensen gets home (with a drunken Jared in tow), Jeff still hasn’t responded to the three messages that he left on his voicemail. He wonders if Jeff even took his phone with him on his trip, but he doubts that Jeff has even left; not even  _Jeff_  could disappear that quickly. After checking his emails, Jensen shuts down his laptop and turns to see that Jared’s still sitting silently on his couch. Jensen’s not really sure what he’s supposed to say.  
  
‘ _So, my ex-boyfriend tried hooked up with you, huh?’_ isn’t really the best conversation starter.  
  
“How are you feeling?” is what Jensen settles on. Jared is still clutching the brown paper bag that contains the vodka. Jensen hopes that Jared stops drinking because he really doesn’t want to spend his night cleaning up puke.  
  
“Fine,” Jared says distantly, and then he snorts. “If only my Dad could see me now. He’s spent a year cleaning up my mess and here I am again, fucking it all up.” Jensen has heard the rumors about Jared’s father: that he’s a control freak, that he pushed Jared into medicine, and that his wife left him because of how controlling he was. Of course, “rumor” is the key word here, and Jensen knows better than to listen to idle gossip.  
  
“You haven’t fucked anything up,” Jensen says soothingly. “You were upset, and you decided to have a drink. It wasn’t the best reaction, but you’re only human.”  
  
“You don’t understand.”  
  
“Try me,” Jensen says, because he can’t stand the utter loneliness that he hears in Jared’s voice. Jared turns to him and gives him an unreadable look. It is almost as though he’s sizing him up.  
  
“So what exactly happened with you and Jeff?” Jensen asks, and he can hear the edge to his own voice, but he tries to keep his facial expression neutral. Jared’s face instantly takes on a guilty look and Jensen tries hard not to get angry.  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jared says, he looks away. “But…I will. You of all people deserve that much. I need you to do something for me first.”  
  
Minutes later, as Jensen returns from pouring the remnants of the vodka down his sink, he wonders if Jared had been in rehab for the past year. It would make sense. He shakes his head as he sits down; Jared is just making sure that he didn’t drink the entire bottle. That’s all it is. Or at least, that’s all Jensen hopes it is.  
  
“I slept with Jeff,” Jared blurts it out like he’s ripping off a fucking Band-Aid and it hits Jensen like a fist to gut.  
  
“That bastard,” he mutters, even though he’s not surprised. Jeff never did have a good track record when it came to being faithful, but sleeping with a resident who was under his supervision was a whole new ball game  
  
“I know it was wrong and I wasn’t even all that attracted to him. He was just  _there_  and it happened,” Jared explains. “I didn’t know that you were dating him at the time. And he never said.”  
  
  
  
  
  
 _Figures_ , Jensen thinks.  
  
“So, it was consensual,” Jensen says. “How did that lead to you filing a formal complaint?”  
  
“You read it,” Jared says snootily. “I didn’t accuse him of molesting me, did I?” At first Jensen’s taken aback at Jared’s change in mood, but once he factors in the alcohol and the fact that they’re not exactly discussing something trivial, he shrugs.  
  
“You said that he was harassing you.”  
  
“Because he  _was_ ,” Jared insists. “I guess it was my fault. See, you and him threw that party a week after it happened. It was your anniversary or something. I felt so  _bad_. I mean, a lot of the nurses and docs gave me shit because of my dad but you’d always been nice.” Jensen doesn’t say a word in response, and for about a minute or so it’s so quiet that he can hear the traffic passing by his apartment. Jeff had promised that it’d be him and  _him_  only.  
  
Jeff made it a week before their third anniversary.  
  
Suddenly, Jensen wants Jared to get the fuck out of his face. He wants to be alone. He looks up to say something and then he catches sight of Jared’s face. He looks torn up, like he’s been holding this in for a long time. Hell, he most likely has been. The anger bleeds out of him once again.  
  
“I said I was going to tell you,” Jared continued, slowly,” and then he got really nasty about it. I guess it was my fault for opening my stupid mouth. He said that he’d fail me if I said a word, and I couldn’t let that happen. After a couple of months, he came on to me again but I said no. He wouldn’t stop but he wasn’t violent about it or anything, so I let it slide. Until one day, he called me into his office, said that he would write a really, really bad report for that year unless I agreed to…hook up with him--”  
  
“You said ‘no,’ he wrote it anyway, and then you left?” Jensen finishes, and Jared nods. “I see. Thanks for telling me. I promise that it won’t leave this room.” Jared looks momentarily taken aback by Jensen’s sudden and abrupt tone. It is soon replaced by a maudlin expression.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jared says meekly. “I know that it must be hard to hear, even though you’re not dating him anymore. I wish I could have said something before I left, but I wasn’t in the right headspace.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Jensen replies with a weak smile. “Hey, I’m gonna grab dinner. Will you be okay here?”  
  
Despite the fact that Jared gives him a long, hard look, his response is a simple nod.

  
Jeff’s car is outside the apartment when Jensen pulls up. Jensen uses the key that Jeff gave him to get in. Truthfully, he’s not sure why he still has the key; the sight of it makes him feel uneasy. When Jensen enters, Jeff emerges from the kitchen, with a box in his hands. He stops, and there’s guilt written all over his face when he catches sight of Jensen. Numbness spreads within Jensen as he looks back at Jeff.  
  
Before Jensen even realises what’s happened, the contents of the box are scattered across the ground, Jeff’s holding the side of his face, and he looks a little wild and shocked. Pain blooms across Jensen’s fist; the sudden numbness leaves him as quickly as it had arrived.  
  
“Ow,” he hisses, cradles his hand as the painfully hits him. “You stupid fucker.”  
  
“Hey, you’re the one who punched me!” Jeff says.  
  
“You deserved it, Jeff,” Jensen replies. “He’s just a kid!”  
  
“So Jared told you. That didn’t take long.”  
  
“Oh, don’t act as though you’re not to blame here, Jeff. What you did was reckless and cruel. God, I don’t even want to look at you right now. When you leave town, don’t bother coming back.” Jensen storms out, and ignores Jeff calling out after him.  
  
When Jensen gets back to his apartment, there’s no sign of Jared.  
  
He feels bad for feeling relieved.

  
Jensen’s a cardiac surgeon, so he mostly spends his days doing rounds and dragging patients into operating rooms for valve replacements and pacemaker fittings. It’s maybe not the most interesting or the nicest job, but he loves it regardless. Sometimes he wishes that he didn’t work at a teaching hospital, because the surgical residents can be drag sometimes. Generally though, he always has fun looking out for them. Jensen’s got two under his wing at the moment, a nice young woman by the name of Sandy McCoy and Jared. Both are supposed to report to the ward promptly at nine in the morning.  
  
Jensen’s not sure what to do when it’s hits half past nine and Jared hasn’t shown up yet. It should go in his log, but he decides to give Jared a break. It’s nine thirty-seven when Jared rushes into his office with an apologetic look on his face.  _He looks like shit_ , is the first thought that enters Jensen’s mind. Jared’s face is pale and there are dark rings under his eyes. Jensen debates whether or not he ought to send him home.  
  
“Do you have any face wipes or something? I’m sure I must look like crap,” Jared says in a hoarse voice.  
  
“Maybe you should go home.”  
  
“No!” Jared practically shouts at him, and Jensen waits patiently for him to regain his control. “Look,” Jared continues after a moment, “I get that things are awkward and that everyone hates me. But I  _cannot_  let my Dad down.”  
  
“Fine,” Jensen relents as he reaches into one of his drawers and takes out a pack of wipes. “I’d rather you took a shower, but you’re late enough as it is. Get changed and meet me down on the ward.”

  
A few hours after Jared’s arrival, Michael Rosenbaum, the hospital’s medical director, shows up. Jensen doesn’t have any problems with Rosenbaum, apart from the way he’s blatantly checking up on him. Jensen hates the fact that Jared being the son of one of the hospital board members is such a huge issue. They’re midway through talking to one of the patients when Rosenbaum shows up. Jared makes a young woman laugh with his stupid jokes as Jensen and her parents look on. It’s good to see Jared looking stress free for a few minutes and Jensen gets so lost in the sight that he doesn’t notice Rosenbaum’s presence immediately.  
  
“How’s he settling in?” Rosenbaum asks once he’s pulled Jensen aside. “I’ve gotten three calls from his father already.” Rosenbaum’s tone is level and he looks unfazed, as if he’s not bothered by the situation at all. Jensen wonders why he’s even here.  
  
“He’s getting on okay. He’s coming into the operating room with me later to observe,” Jensen answers. “And so far the nurses have been giving him a wide berth, unless there are medical related issues.” By ‘wide berth’ Jensen means a fair amount of snide looks and hushed whispers. Jared hasn’t seemed upset by it all, so he reckons that it’s just par for the course. It’ll die down in a couple of days.  
  
“Good,” Rosenbaum says quietly, after a lengthy silence. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

 

  
Jensen doesn’t get the second email until the end of his shift. He’s just finished asking Sandy and Jared questions and giving them the opportunity to ask him some in return when he finally gets a chance to boot up his computer. He learned the hard way that having his email alerts set up on his phone at work was a disaster. Jensen briefly considers turning them back on, if only so that he doesn’t look like a fool in front of the rest of his colleagues.  
  
The email is buried in the middle of his inbox, and he swallows as he opens it. His mouth turns dry as he clicks on the file and looks. It’s nothing too raunchy, just Jared and Jeff kissing each other in what appears to be Jeff’s old office. But he ends up feeling like he did the previous night, like someone has sucker punched him in the guts. Even though he already knows about this, reading about it still stings.  
  
“Are you okay, Dr. Ackles?” Sandy asks and Jensen blinks, as he realises that she and Jared are still sitting across from him. Sandy looks concerned but Jared has this weird blank expression on his face that Jensen’s surprised he didn’t notice before.  
  
“I’m fine,” Jensen reassures her. “You’re free to go. But, uh, Jared would you mind staying for a moment?” There’s silence as Sandy grabs her stuff and leaves. She takes what appears to be a ball of tension with her, because Jensen lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding as the door slams shut. He should be mad at Jared, but he’s not. If anything, Jensen just feels sorry for him.  
  
“You’ve seen the email then,” Jared says shortly, snapping Jensen back to reality. “Is this Jeff? Is he the one doing this?”  
  
That stops Jensen short. Not the accusation but the fact that Jared thinks that Jensen still knows what the hell Jeff is capable of after the initial revelation. Despite spending three years with him, he doesn’t really know who Jeff is anymore. Medical Meddler’s “ _Commiserations, Jensen”_  is about right.  
  
“I don’t know,” he says eventually with a harsh, derisive snort. “I know nothing.” He pretends not to notice the worried look that Jared sends his way. He doesn’t need sympathy from one of Jeff’s former conquests.

  
Chris is working a night shift so Jensen decides to go home and drink beer until he falls asleep. It’s a sound plan that seems promising until he comes across a giant, shadowy figure waiting by his car.  
  
“Jared, what are you doing here?” Jensen just about manages to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Sure, he’s not mad at Jared.  _Yet_. Right now most of his anger is reserved for Jeff. The rest is aimed at himself for being stupid for so long, and for being embarrassed by all of this, even though he hasn’t done anything wrong.  
  
“I just wanted to make sure that you were okay,” Jared says as he fiddles with his hair nervously. “You seemed a bit off in your office earlier.”  
  
Jensen shrugs. “I’m not the one in the pictures. I’m fine.” Jared looks at him for a long time before he just shrugs and nods as if to say,  _whatever you say._  
  
He’s still standing there when Jensen pulls out of the parking lot.

  
Two weeks later, Jensen finds himself outside of the bar near the hospital with a group of his co-workers because Chris has taken it upon himself to cheer Jensen up. Jensen’s tried telling his best friend that he’s okay, but Chris keeps on giving him this weird look that he can’t quite read. So, when Katie, one of the nurses says, “I heard that Jeff might be on his way back here,” Jensen freezes.  
  
There haven’t been any emails from the mysterious meddler since the pictures of Jeff and Jared. Not that Jensen can forget about it when Jared is unable to even walk through the ward without a sly comment from somebody. Short of reporting his co-workers, Jensen’s at loss of what he can do. He makes sure that he’s present with Jared when he can be, and reinforces the fact that Jared and Sandy are a team. Usually, he’d see about getting Jared reassigned to another doctor and another ward, but he doesn’t want anyone to think that he can’t handle the situation.  
  
“Yeah,” the nurse is saying. “Apparently one of Jeff’s references wasn’t so great and the company in Vegas rescinded his offer. Technically he walked, and they haven’t exactly found a replacement for him yet.” Jensen knows that it’s just idle gossip but, it’s still hard to hear. He doesn’t know if he’s up to working anywhere near Jeff. When they move onto another topic, Jensen takes the opportunity to slip out of the bar. He whips out his cell phone and dials the number quickly as heads over to the spot where he’d parked.  
  
“What?” Jeff answers. Jensen’s eyes widen in disbelief; appalled that Jeff has the nerve to be mad at  _him_.  
  
“Hello to you too, jackass,” he says, as he unlocks his car and slides in. “I don’t want you coming back here.”  
  
“Yeah well, maybe you shouldn’t have screwed around with my references,” Jeff says and Jensen bristles at the snide tone. “All I have to do is issue a formal apology and I’m golden.” Jensen hadn’t exactly given him a bad reference; he’d just refrained from providing one at all. He didn’t even know why Jeff had given his name anyway.  
  
Jensen rolls his eyes to himself, “You think they’ll let you come back after the pictures that have been sent around the hospital? You’re insane.”  
  
“We’ll see about that,” Jeff says, and before Jensen can reply, he’s met with the humming sound of the dial tone and he throws his phone down on the passenger seat in frustration.  
  
Fuck Jeff.

  
It is Jensen’s day off, but he finds himself at the hospital anyway. Jared’s father asked if Jensen could give Jared a few catch up sessions, to ease him back into his residency, and Jensen had no choice but to agree. While Mr. Padalecki hadn’t mentioned the emails, there’d been a sharp look in his eyes.  
  
In the end, Jensen decides to invite Sandy along too because he is wary of being left alone with Jared. Jared seems to be innocent in all of this, but Jensen doesn’t know the guy all that well yet, and maybe this mess was as much Jared’s fault as Jeff’s. It also doesn’t take a genius to deduce that anonymous emails aren’t the most trustworthy of sources.  
  
By the time Jensen reaches his office, Jared is already waiting outside, alone, and Jensen tries not to let his apprehension show on his face. Perhaps Sandy’s late. He nods at Jared as he unlocks his door and steps inside, beckoning for Jared to follow him.  
  
“Sandy can’t make it,” Jared says as he closes the door behind him. Jensen fights the urge to tell him to leave it ajar. “She’s sick. Apparently, she ate some bad Mexican take out last night. I told her that I’d tell you.” Jensen clears his throat, as he sets about pointlessly rearranging stuff on his desk.  
  
“Maybe, we should do this another time then,” he suggests, as he feels a jittering of nerves. He begins to tap his fingers on the desk. Jared remains silent for a while, before he eventually shrugs.  
  
“Uh, okay.” Jensen looks up and catches Jared looking right at him. Jensen is momentarily caught by the blue-green in his eyes. He’s not sure why it takes all of his effort to look away. Hell, he’s not sure why he has some sort of weird feeling towards Jared of all people. There is a beat and then Jared seems to lose all of his composure as he sinks down into the chair. He looks completely beaten down and worn out, and Jensen cannot help feeling a little sympathetic. Again, he’s not sure why, but he’s tired of telling himself that he should be angry.  
  
“You know, my Dad wanted me to go to another hospital even though it was easier to just come here. He said that people might be weird, but I thought he was just being overbearing and shit. I didn’t realise that  _this_  would happen,” Jared pauses as he looks down at the ground. “I’m trying  _so_  hard to keep it together.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t want to hear this. He does not want to be Jared’s confidant; he does not want to be Jared’s  _anything_. Sure he has to guide him or whatever, but that’s Jensen’s job. Off the clock, he does not want to have Jared on his mind, does not want to think about how someone with his life ahead of him looks like he’s been to hell and back.  
  
“Look,” he says gently. “You’ve just got to ride it out. The rumours will die down eventually and soon no one will even remember these emails. I’m sure there’ll be some new crisis soon and those guys won’t even remember that they’re in the midst of making your life hell.”  
  
“That’s…comforting,” Jared says in a tone that says he believes otherwise, but there is a hint of a smile on his face. “Uh, are you doing anything for lunch?” Jensen feels the tension creeping back into his shoulders and he grabs his keys. He was going to catch up with some paperwork, but suddenly he thinks that he’s best off doing that at home.  
  
“Sorry, I’m busy,” he replies. “Chad’s off work today as well, isn’t he? The two of you are friends?”  
  
“Eh, he hasn’t spoken to me since the last email,” Jared says, shrugging bashfully. “It’s all good. I’ll just go hang at home—do some laundry or something.”  
  
Jensen takes a deep breath.

  
Two hours later, he finds himself at Jared’s –  _huge –_ house with a plate of steak sandwiches in front of him. He tries his best to ignore the voice in his head calling him a  _dumbfuck_. Jared, for the most part, acts like they’re long lost friends. He tells Jensen funny, random stories. He strays away from anything personal but Jensen still feels a little uneasy. He feels as if he’s breaking some kind of moral code by hanging out with Jared. But on the other hand, what happened with Jared and Jeff was so long ago that he doesn’t think brooding over it is worth the effort. Perhaps he should just do his best to get over it.  
  
“This is weird, isn’t it?” Jared says as he places a glass of orange juice next to Jensen’s plate. “The two of us hanging out?”  
  
“Just a tad,” Jensen says with a wry chuckle. “After Jeff and that whole mess, this is the  _last_  place I should be.” Jared looks as though he’s considering this for a moment before he sits down across from Jensen and takes a deep breath.  
  
“Okay, fine,” he says. “How about we even-up the playing field a little? You tell me the most sordid thing you’ve ever done, and we’ll be even.”  
  
Jensen snorts, “You’re kidding, right? In what way will that make us even? Was sleeping with Jeff the most  _sordid_  thing you’ve ever done?”  
  
“Of course,” Jared says with a hint of smile. “Well, no. But it comes pretty close.”  
  
Jensen’s kind of surprised that he can laugh about it. He feels as though his uneasiness should be increasing not…slipping away.  
  
He even finds himself thinking that maybe they can be friends.

  
When Jensen sees Jared next, he’s being yelled at by Danneel, for interfering with a patient. Jared looks a little baffled, but Jensen catches Tom watching from the corner with a satisfied look on his face and he sighs to himself. He re-adjusts his glasses and heads over towards the back of the break room.  
  
Tom corners him as he nears Jared and Danneel and says, “They’re having a private discussion.” Jensen gives Tom the dirtiest look he can muster and shoves past him.  
  
“What the hell is going on here?” Jensen demands. Danneel turns to face him, annoyance painted all over her face as wisps of red hair escape from her loose bun.  
  
“I was supposed to be operating on Mrs. Peterson in an hour, only for Jared here to tell me that he hadn’t seen her file!” Jared still looks confused and Jensen hates the way his brain is yelling for him to rescue Jared. Even so, Jared’s still under his guidance and Danneel’s verbal attack is wholly unprofessional. He suspects that she’s just having a bad day, and Jared’s basically a walking target in the hospital now. He finds himself wishing that someone else is exposed as being a lying, two timing cheat in the next email.  
  
“Did you ask the nurses?” Jensen asks calmly and Danneel frowns. “Maybe they updated it and left it at the front desk.”  
  
“Tom told me that he last saw Jared with it,” she says but Jensen can hear the hesitant tone in her voice. They both turn to look at Tom, who’s not even concealing his smirk. “That bastard.” She flounces off before Jensen can say anything else and he shakes his head to himself.  
  
“Wow,” Jared says. “They  _really_  respect you here don’t they?”  
  
“What?” Jensen asks because he was expecting more of a ‘ _this isn’t fair’_  kind of comment from Jared.  
  
“Your friends here, they’re really defensive of you. That must be…nice.”  
  
Jensen’s not sure why the comment stings.

  
The next email arrives later that evening, just after Jensen’s shift ends. He’s in his office, catching up on his pile of medical journals when he hears the notification. His mouth falls open as he sees the subject of the email.  
  


## 

  
Chad is there when Jensen arrives at Jared’s house later that evening. When Jensen spots Jared’s father he realises that he probably should have called ahead. Nobody calls him out on his surprise appearance so he accepts Jared’s invitation when he directs him to sit on the couch. Mr. Padalecki makes himself scarce and Jared brings him a Coke. Jensen catches himself before he comments on the lack of beer when he realises that Chad’s drinking the same thing. He’s seen Chad at social gatherings but he’s never seen him drink soda on its own before.  
  
“I take it you didn’t see the latest email,” Jensen says instead, after an awkward silence fills the room.  
  
“Oh, we did,” Jared says bitterly. “Why else would Chad be here? After all that email somehow proves that I’m not the one sending the emails.” Chad at least has the decency to look guilty but he shrugs.  
  
“Dude, come on. You can do all kinds of shit with computers. You can’t blame me for wondering.”  
  
“I’m not like that anymore,” Jared says sadly. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”  
  
Jensen feels like he’s intruding somehow, and he berates himself for turning up. The tension between Chad and Jared is palpable and awkward, and he finds himself hoping that they sort things out for Jared’s sake. Jensen’s just not sure what that says about him.  
  
“Why would Tom steal drugs?” Jensen asks. “I thought his parents were rich.” Jared snorts and shakes his head, muttering something that sounds a lot like  _fuck Tom_. Jensen turns to Chad, but Chad shrugs again and Jensen shifts awkwardly.  
  
He really shouldn’t have come. He’s not sure why he did. He’d driven here with the intention of talking to Jared, but what exactly he wanted to talk about was still unclear. The emails or his work at the hospital? Jensen doesn’t know, and the realisation that he just needs to talk to Jared about  _something_ sends a ripple of unease running through him. He shifts slightly, and does his best to make sure his feelings don’t show on his face.  
  
“Tom…he’s a Grade A douchebag,” Chad says before the silence fills up the room. “It’s not a surprise that he’s been caught up in something skeevy like this.” Jensen nods in agreement, because Chad is right. It’s a shame though, because Tom was a pretty decent doctor. He just had a sort of shark-like mentality. Jensen guesses that Tom had bitten off more than he could chew this time around.

  
Chad makes his excuses seconds after Jensen announces he’s leaving, and they walk down Jared’s driveway together in silence. Jensen’s just about to head over to his car when Chad stops him, with a shrewd look on his face.  
  
“If you hurt him, I’ll hurt you,” he says and Jensen blinks at him.  
  
“If I hurt  _who_?” he asks, because he genuinely doesn’t have any idea who Chad’s referring to.  
  
“Jared.” Oh.  _Oh._  
  
“There’s nothing going on between me and Jared,” Jensen says quickly, wincing internally at the nervousness creeping into his voice. “After everything, why would I even have a thing for him?”  
  
“Maybe because you know that he’s not to blame for what happened two years ago, and maybe because you know first-hand how Jeff can screw someone over,” Chad says. “Plus, Jared likes you.”  
  
“Oh, well that’s okay then,” Jensen mutters as he scuffs his shoe on the gravel. “We’ll just get together, date for a while, get married and have Mongolian babies and pretend that he didn’t fuck my boyfriend behind my back.”  
  
“Oh, who  _wasn’t_  fucking Jeff behind your back?” Chad snaps and Jensen can almost feel his eyes widening comically. Chad suddenly looks ashamed and he turns away from Jensen, and starts to walk over to his own car. Jensen is frozen on the spot for a moment as the words sink in slowly. By the time he’s ready to demand some answers, Chad’s peeling out of the driveway, his tires squealing as he speeds off. Jensen swallows around the lump forming in his throat as he moves towards his car. Something in the corner of his eye makes him stop, and he sees that Jared’s standing in the doorway of the house, watching him.  
  
“How much of that did you hear?” he asks in a hoarse voice.  
  
“All of it?” Jared says meekly, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to say. Jensen simply unlocks his car, and slides into it. He’s doing up his seatbelt when the passenger door opens and Jared gets in. Jared looks a little terrified and Jensen bites down the angry outburst that had been forming on his lips. Instead he focuses on starting the car and getting the hell out of there.

  
They end up at this twenty-four hour diner just a few blocks away from Jensen’s apartment. Partly because Jared’s hungry and partly because Jensen doesn’t think an out of town bender is a good idea when he has to be in surgery the next day. He makes a mental note to stop off for some Red Bull before he gets home. It isn’t that late; last time he’d checked it had been eleven pm and his shift isn’t until nine in the morning.  
  
Jared is quiet. Jensen remembers Jared usually being exuberant, bubbly and loud. Now that he thinks about it, the Jared who’s returned seems different. More mature, more worn out.  
  
“What happened to you?” he asks suddenly. “Why’d you just up and disappear like that?”  
  
“I  _told_  you already,” Jared says as he drops his fork with a loud clatter. “The Jeff stuff.”  
  
Jensen pauses to consider that for a moment and realises that he had just assumed that it was the Jeff complaint and Jared had gone with it. He’s not sure how he knows that there’s more to the story, but he’s certain of it.  
  
“You told me about the Jeff stuff, but not why you left. You could have handed in the complaint and contested his report. But instead you just vanished. And, maybe that would have been your choice, but we all saw what your Dad was like during your first couple of years. He never would have let you just quit.”  
  
“Yeah, well, maybe I’d had enough of that fucking hospital and the nastiness that happens when the staff are not in front of the patients,” Jared replies angrily, and Jensen’s not sure why his skin heats up as he watches Jared’s nostrils flare. Maybe he’s just happy that Jared’s not fucking holding back for once.  
  
“Why did you come back then?”  
  
“I already told you why!” Jared says. “My dad works for the hospital and it’s where I did the first two years, it doesn’t make sense for me to go anywhere else!”  
  
“Oh right, like your dad’s not rich enough to get you a place at another hospital in the state.” Jensen’s not sure why he’s pushing Jared so hard, but he’s pissed off and he just can’t seem to stop.  
  
“You know, maybe this place wouldn’t be so bad if you just took some responsibility for once. You’re a senior surgeon but nah, so long as they’re not gossiping about you, you just close your eyes and pretend that their behaviour is okay. You let them talk shit to me every goddamn day.” Jared pauses to take a breath and Jensen’s too stunned to interrupt. “At first, I thought you let them talk to me that way because you were angry at me and I understood. But then I realised that you just don’t care, Jensen. You’re just as bad as them.”  
  
“That’s not true.”  
  
“Isn’t it?” Jared hisses. “Well, I don’t care anymore; I am  _done_  pretending that I’m okay with this. I thought that maybe we could be friends, but…you’ve just been pretending all along. I bet that you’re just waiting for me to spill everything so that you can tell your buddies and then we’ll all get another informative email. Fuck you, Jensen. Just…I can’t take this from  _you_.”  
  
Before Jensen can react, Jared is grabbing his jacket and sliding out the booth and going out the doors. Shit.


	2. Chapter 2

  
  
  
The next morning when Jensen gets into the elevator, Jared’s standing at the back, looking nonplussed. He glances up at Jensen when he enters and looks away almost instantly. Jensen hits the button for the sixth floor. He waits for Jared to say something, but when he doesn’t he clears his throat and decides to make Jared hear him out.  
  
“Jared,” Jensen says. “Look about last night…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push.” Jared doesn’t acknowledge what Jensen’s said. They’re in the elevator, heading up to the sixth floor, where they’ll be working with the same patients and on the same ward. Jensen doesn’t want there to be any awkwardness lingering over them. Jared keeps his eyes straight-ahead with his arms folded across his torso. Jensen’s not sure if appreciating the curve of Jared’s muscled arms is appropriate or not. Probably not. But for whatever reason, Jared looks really good in the standard green scrubs today. Jensen has a feeling that it has something to do with how angry Jared had gotten yesterday. While he’d mostly been ashamed of himself, a tiny part of him had been a little turned on. The way Jared’s eyes had flamed angrily, cheeks reddening as spat out the harsh words, the way he’d come  _alive_.  
  
Just as he turns to say something else, the lights dim and there is a creaking sound as the elevator comes to a halt. The hospital has been having problems with the elevators all week; Jensen assumes that the person who sent out the notice about them being fixed was being presumptuous. When the doors don’t open, Jensen realises that they’re stuck here. His first thought is  _thank god that we weren’t moving a patient._ And his second is that this at least gives him time to talk to Jared. As he has that thought, Jared’s deep voice sounds in his ear and he realises that Jared is at the emergency intercom. Jensen waits patiently while Jared tells security that they’re stuck between the fifth and sixth floor and describes what had happened. The second he steps away from the intercom, Jensen moves so that he is facing Jared.  
  
“Look, I’m sorry,” he says gently. “You were right about some of the things you said yesterday. I’ve been negligent for way too long and I should have spoken up. But you were wrong about one thing. I  _do_  care. I want you to do well. I’ve just not been all with it over the past couple of weeks.” Jensen means what he’s saying. The first thing he did when he got in this morning was to send an email demanding for the people to be civil to one another sprinkled with some not-so-subtle threats of action for those who defied his request.  
  
“Don’t apologise to me,” Jared replies after a long pause. “I don’t deserve it.”  
  
“Oh come on, man,” Jensen says with an eye roll. “You slept with my ex-boyfriend. It’s not like it even matters anymore, Jared. I’m willing to put it in the past if you are.”  
  
“Oh…yes, I’d like that,” Jared says slowly, as if he’s not sure if Jensen’s being serious or not. “And I really am sorry for going off like that. I meant what I said, but my tone was out of line.”  
  
“You were talking to me as a friend,” Jensen says. “I don’t expect my friends to mollycoddle me. I needed to hear it.” Jared scratches the back of his neck gently as he nods and Jensen tracks the movement. There’s a tense feeling in the air around them but Jensen puts it down to the lack of air.  
  
“Always wanted to have friends in high places,” Jensen jokes and Jared snorts gently. Jensen can see sweat glistening on Jared’s chest and he just about manages to stop his breath from catching. He must make a noise though, because Jared turns to stare at him curiously and Jensen finds himself inching closer to the man.  
  
“Jensen…” Jared’s voice trails off and Jensen wonders when Jared stopped calling him Doctor Ackles, because he loves how his name just slips off Jared’s tongue like it fucking belongs there. He breathes out and stands so close to Jared that their noses are practically touching, Jensen’s not sure who moves first, but seconds later they’re kissing and grappling each other until Jared’s back is up against the wall. There’s no real finesse in their movements and they end up sliding down, until they’re on the floor. They finally come up for air. Jensen bites and licks at Jared’s neck, and Jared’s quiet moans send tingles of pleasure running down his spine. He can feel Jared’s hard cock digging into him, but before he can do anything about it, Jared pushes at his chest and Jensen pulls away reluctantly. For a moment there’s nothing but the harsh sound of their heavy breathing, Jared starts chuckling randomly, and it must be contagious because Jensen finds himself joining in too. Jensen wonders how crazy they look, with their mussed hair, kiss-swollen lips and rumpled scrubs, but he finds that he doesn’t really give a shit.  
  
“What…what was that?” Jared asks eventually, his hazel-green eyes wide and fearful.  
  
“Did I…do we…are we..?” He can’t seem to get the words out, so Jensen stands up, and extends a hand to Jared. Jared hesitates for a moment, but clasps Jensen’s hand, and when an electric spark passes between them, Jensen knows that this isn’t just a fluke. He wants this. He wants Jared.  
  
“That was me kissing you,” Jensen says huskily. “And it can either stay in this elevator for good and we just write it off as a fluke. Or—“  
  
“No!” Jared says quickly. “I mean…it’s a little…messy, but damn, that was hot. You’re…you’re hot. But I don’t want…I don’t want what happened before to hang over us. Are you sure that you can leave it all in the past?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jensen lies, because suddenly he’s not sure. He really wants to be, but…there aren’t words for the ways in which Jeff’s screwed him over. Jumping into anything with Jared right now just has  _bad idea_  but he can’t bring himself to say no. “I can leave it all in the past.”  
  
He tells himself that the bright, dimpled smile Jared gives him is worth it.

  


  
Later on that day, Jensen corners Chad in the break room. Despite what he’d said to Jared, leaving  _everything_  that Jeff’s done in the past is a stretch. Chad’s parting words have been eating him up and Jensen just needs some fucking answers before he goes apeshit and smashes something. He hates the fact that this new  _thing_  he has with Jared isn’t at the forefront of his mind, but he shrugs it off as he slides across from Chad and sits down with his lunch.  
  
“Jensen,” Chad says around a mouthful of a burger. “What I said last night, just forget about it, okay? You were right about Jared, it wouldn’t work anyway.” Jensen doesn’t even bother focusing on the last part of Chad’s statement.  
  
He just leans forward and says, “I want names.” Chad sighs as he sets his burger down and looks at Jensen. Well, it’s more of a squint but it still makes Jensen want to squirm.  
  
“So, Tom? I’m guessing Tom. Who else?”  
  
“I don’t know!” Chad says in frustration. “It was just a rumour that made it around the block a few times. Some people chose not to believe it and some people did; it doesn’t mean it was true.”  
  
“Did he sleep around only with guys, or was he not all that fussy about where he stuck his dick?” Chad’s packs up his food and eyes the exits as if he’s about to make a run for it.  
  
“I don’t have any answers for you, man,” Chad says as he stands up. Jensen follows suit and watches Chad give him a sympathetic look.  
  
He doesn’t realise that he’s punched Chad until he goes down like a sack of potatoes.

  


  
Later that day, Jared is waiting outside his office when Jensen finally emerges from a meeting with some other surgeons, about a particularly difficult surgical case. Truth be told, Jensen would rather not deal with Jared right at this moment, but that’s mostly due to the headache that’s been building up. So he gestures Jared in with a smile. At first Jensen thinks that Jared’s here to yell at him for punching his friend, but then he catches the sad look in Jared’s eyes.  
  
“Chad told me what happened,” he says when Jensen sinks into his chair. “That you wanted to know who the other people were. And suddenly everything you’ve said and done makes sense. There’s nothing here for us, Jensen.”  
  
The thing is that, Jensen does like Jared. He finds him attractive, sweet and has this urge to protect him from what the fuck ever. But the way he came on to Jared in the elevator just isn’t him. It’s not his style; he doesn’t just make out it with people and rut against them without going on a few dates first, maybe dinner and a movie. But that’s exactly how the whole mess with Jeff had started. Jensen feels like he’d been channelling Jeff down in that elevator and it wasn’t –  _isn’t_  - fair to Jared. However, Jensen doesn’t want Jeff to ruin anything else.  
  
“Look…I just…I need some time to sort my shit out,” he says.  
  
“This is a bad idea,” Jared says shakily. “But okay.” He stands up to leave and almost walks smack bang into Chris who’s standing the doorway. The look on his face tells Jensen that Chris heard more than enough. Jensen wishes that he’d closed his damn door. Jared mumbles his goodbye and leaves quickly, and Chris shuts the door behind him.  
  
“It’s not what it looks like,” Jensen says defensively as Chris flops down onto Jared’s abandoned seat.  
  
“You like him,” Chris says with a shrug. “You always did.”  
  
“I barely even knew the guy,” Jensen protests. “Plus, I was with Jeff.”  
  
“Why would Jeff go out of his way to hook up with a kid who’s got a father who could fuck up his career if he didn’t have some sort of ulterior motive.” Jensen laughs at that. It is an absurd thing to say. Jeff slept with someone because Jensen had a crush on them? That’s ridiculous. Yet it…sounds like something Jeff would do. He always loved to play mind games.  
  
“Why would he do that?” Jensen asks. “Why would he want to hurt me like that?”  
  
Chris sighs and says, “Because, you’re Jensen Ackles, prestigious cardiac surgeon who no one has a bad word to say about. People like Jeff get by on lies, greed and notoriety. I bet my left ball that these emails are his way of getting revenge.”  
  
“It’s not Jeff’s style,” Jensen says with a shake of his head. “Jeff would want to watch as the person realised what he’d done. This sneaky, underhand thing isn’t what Jeff would do.” The words feel hollow in his mouth, because really, how the hell would he know what Jeff would do? Doesn’t all of this prove that he doesn’t really know Jeff at all?  
  
“Anyway, why’d you punch Murray?” Chris changes the subject, and pokes at his pocket watch after glancing at the time quickly. “That’s not like you. Heard you got a week’s suspension, or “leave” as HR likes to call it.”  
  
Jensen sighs and says, “He said that Tom and Jeff had a thing, and then implied that Jeff had been going around sleeping with everyone here.”  
  
“That’s not true,” Chris says. “Tom - yes. But no one else at the hospital, I’ve got your back man, I’d have told you.”  
  
“What about Tom?” Jensen says sharply. “You didn’t tell me about that.”  
  
“It was after you broke up. I don’t know why Murray’s shit-stirring. Maybe he wants Padalecki all for himself.”  
  
“Or maybe he wants  _me_  nowhere near Jared at all,” Jensen concludes with a weary sigh. He found himself thinking about the past year and how it still bothered him that he didn’t know where Jared had been. Plus, there was the fact that Jared had already had a turbulent relationship with one of his mentors. Jensen does not want history to repeat itself.  
  
“Maybe he’s got a point, I mean Jared’s back for all of a minute and you’re acting like a crazy person and punching people. He’s bad news, Jensen.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t expect Chris to understand; he’s not sure that he understands himself.

  


  
Rosenbaum is in his office when Jensen knocks half an hour later. He gives Jensen a shrewd look and invites him to take a seat.  
  
“How can I help you?” Rosenbaum asks. “Is this about Padalecki?”  
  
“Uh, yeah. Yes it is,” Jensen says. Rosenbaum reaches into his desk and pulls out a folder and opens it, his pen poised as if he is ready to write something down. “I don’t think I can be responsible for Jared anymore. And I think that Ms. McCoy should also be reassigned to another doctor. They work well both individually and with one another, so keeping them together would be a good thing.” As he speaks Rosenbaum writes down a few notes and Jensen clears his throat uncomfortably.  
  
“He hasn’t done anything wrong it’s just…all of the stuff with Jeff has made it very awk--difficult for me to do the best job that I can.”  
  
“That’s fair,” Rosenbaum says. “Perhaps you should focus on your patients for now. Thank you for being honest, Dr. Ackles.”  
  
Jensen wonders if he’s done the right thing.

  
Jared doesn’t speak to him for a week. It’s probably not as big a deal as Jensen thinks it is, but it still stings a little. He realises how it must look, him attempting to put to put a hold on their barely-there relationship and suddenly handing him off to another doctor. Not only that, but the gossip has been swarming around them ever since people found out about Jared and Jeff. Jensen surprised that there hasn’t been another email yet, it doesn’t seem as though the mysterious person is done having their fun. Judging by mocking tone of the emails, they certainly seem to be enjoying the mess they’ve caused.  
  
For the most part he uses the time away from Jared to clear his head and think about what Chris had said. Despite what Chris has to say, he doesn’t think that he’d expressed any secret desires to have his wicked way with Jared in the two years that he’d been here. He’d just admired Jared from afar…under the watchful eye of his ex-boyfriend. Jensen starts to think that maybe he just doesn’t want Chris to be right—but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t.

  


  
“Why are you here?” Jeff says when he opens the door to find Jensen on his doorstep.  
  
“We’ve said all we need to say to each other.” Jensen rolls his eyes and pushes his way in. The place is a mess, with items and boxes strewn everywhere, and Jeff looks like he’s just gotten out of bed. His beard is untrimmed, he looks pale, and there’s no mistaking the tell-tale smell of alcohol in the air.  
  
“I know about you and Tom,” Jensen says by a way of greeting. “Guess you and him can live together in disgrace now that you’re both out of a job.” Jeff snorts as he sits down on his couch and leans back.  
  
“Who didn’t know about me and Tom?” Jeff asks “It’s not like we hid it from anyone, heck, I wish that you would have noticed. I’ve missed seeing your jealous side. Boy did we get some pretty good angry sex out of it.” Jensen ignores the comment and he moves to join Jeff on the couch. He’s not here to trade blows, not really. He’s just here for closure.  
  
“You know what? I don’t really care what you do anymore,” he says wistfully. “I’ve just been fooling myself into thinking that what we had was ever good. It wasn’t.”  
  
“Ouch,” Jeff says bitterly. “Maybe I should bring out the Kleenex in case my feelings get hurt.”  
  
“Why are you being so cruel?” Jensen asks, because he honestly doesn’t get it. Perhaps he’s missing something here. He’d always thought that they parted on good enough terms. Before Jeff had been fired, they’d gotten on well and even had drinks sometimes. Sure, it was always awkward each time, but Jensen didn’t know what he’ done to make Jeff loathe him so much.  
  
“You always acted as though I was the only reason why we fell apart!” Jeff practically explodes and Jensen feels himself shifting unconsciously. “I was no angel, Jensen, but neither were you.”  
  
“Excuse me?” Jensen says. “What the fuck did I ever do to you?”  
  
“Oh, lemme see, you sidelined in favour of your work and research projects, then got upset when you realised that I wasn’t who you wanted. And the real kicker? The way you made eyes at that Padalecki kid like I was  _nothing_. It was okay for you to look but not okay for me.”  
  
Chris was  _right_.  
  
“All I did was look!” Jensen shouts back. “You fucked God knows how many people and I turned a blind eye to most of it. I wanted to be the only one that you had eyes for but you’re not capable of that. What the hell did my  _looking_  at Jared have to do with anything?”  
  
“I was jealous!” Jeff says coldly. “Is that what you want to hear? I was jealous that you looked at him when I could barely get anything from you. So I took what you wanted. Is that what you want to hear?”  
  
Jensen doesn’t reply, and Jeff laughs sadly.  
  
“For what it’s worth, I regret it,” he continues. “I cheated too many times, wasn’t attentive enough, I was bad at all the things that makes someone a decent partner. Even after he left, nothing changed. When I said that it’d only be you after I slept with him and all of the others, I  _meant_  it. But it was too late; I’d already lost you.”  
  
“You can’t just toy with people like that, Jeff,” Jensen feels the fight leave his shoulders as he leans back and mirrors Jeff’s position, turning his head so that they’re facing each other. “Doesn’t it bother you that he was gone for a whole year because of what you did?”  
  
“No,” Jeff says and he puts up hand to stop Jensen from interrupting. “He was already a mess. If anything, I’m surprised that he’s back to finish up his medical degree.”  
  
“What does that mean?” Jensen asks, even though it means that he has to let go of the fact that Jeff had used Jared. He isn’t all that interested in Jeff’s motivations anymore. Jensen isn’t even sure what he’d ever seen in the man.  
  
“Find out for yourself,” Jeff says as he gets up and makes his way out of the room. “You can see yourself out.”  
  
As he leaves Jeff’s apartment, Jensen grits his teeth and barely manages to convince himself not to smash something.

  


  
“Are you out of your mind?” Danneel shouts at him, as she barges into Jensen’s office with Kristen Bell, another cardiac surgeon, hot on her heels and shoving her way in also. They both demand to know Jensen needs his head checked out. Jensen’s pretty sure that, in another life, he’d find it funny, but at the moment he is mortified. Not just for himself, but for Jared. Jensen’s been featured in one email and he feels ashamed and awful; he can’t even imagine how  _Jared_  feels. Plus he’s sure that Chad’s waiting for him in a dark corner somewhere, ready to kick the living daylights out of him. So maybe Jensen has an excuse when he tells them both to get the fuck out.  
  
“Seriously?” Kristen says, as she narrows her eyes. “We’re trying to help you.”  
  
“Calling me a ‘dumbfuck’ is not being helpful!” Jensen exclaims. “Just go. Both of you. Out. I have patient files to catch up on.” He turns to face his files and pretends to be flipping through them but he senses that they’re both looking at him. Jensen stands his ground and doesn’t look up until they shuffle out of his office. He breathes a sigh of relief as the door closes, and he picks up his pen, ready to get his paperwork over and done with before his break is over. Before he can even write a word, the door bursts open once again.  
  
“I thought I told you to leave,” Jensen says without looking up. He’s met with silence. Jensen glances upward and winces to himself when he sees Rosenbaum standing there.  
  
“Uh, sorry, thought you were someone else.” The look on Rosenbaum’s face is blank and it hits Jensen: he’s been caught fraternizing (well more than that) with a resident. Not only is that prohibited, it’s just darn right unprofessional. Jeff’s probably laughing at him now.  
  
“I’ve spoken to Dr. Padalecki and he’s told me that it was all one-sided and that you gave him the brush off,” Rosenbaum says in an indifferent tone. Jensen wants to scoff. He watched the clip, and in no way did it even  _remotely_  look one-sided. “Given that you asked me to transfer him to another doctor, I don’t think the matter needs to be taken any further.” He stops to look Jensen straight in the eye, and Jensen blinks back at him.  
  
Only when Rosenbaum quirks an eyebrow up does Jensen realise that he’s waiting for Jensen to respond.  
  
“Okay, thanks,” he says eventually, and Rosenbaum just nods and leaves the room.

  


  
Within fifteen minutes of being back on the ward, Jensen wishes that he were back in the safe haven of his office. He sees his colleagues staring at him and hears them whispering about him. He almost snaps. That’s before he considers the fact that Jared’s put up with it for a month without doing so. Plus, these are the people that he’s worked with for years and Jensen knows first-hand what they’re like; in a few days they’ll have moved on to someone else.  
  
He pushes it out of his mind as he approaches an old patient of his, Mrs. Peterson. She’s in to have a pacemaker fitted, now that her hip surgery is out of the way. Jensen smiles warmly at her over his clipboard.  
  
“How are you feeling, Mrs. Peterson?” he asks, laughing when she mock-frowns at him.  
  
“I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told you to call me Martha,” she chides gently.  
  
“But I suppose it’s nice that some of you young men still have manners.”  
  
Jensen grins at her and asks her all the standard questions. He monitors her recorded obs, checks her sats, and makes sure that she’s aware of the risks and what the surgery entails. It’s nothing that she hasn’t been through before, but Jensen likes to make sure. As he’s talking, he notices her curious glance and the way she is trying to read him. That’s nothing new either and he’s almost expecting the comment she makes just before he turns to leave.  
  
“You seem unhappy, dear,” she says.  
  
“Oh, I’m fine,” Jensen replies with a smile. “You just focus on getting better. I’ll be back to check on you later.”  
  
He turns to give her one last smile and when he turns back, Jared just happens to walk by. Jensen finds himself tracking Jared’s movements, secretly hoping that Jared will acknowledge him somehow, but he doesn’t.


	3. Chapter 3

A week after the video of him and Jared in the elevator, Jensen finds himself at the gym with Chris. He doesn’t go often, but after receiving the cold shoulder from Jared all week long, he needs to release all of his stress and tension somehow. He’s testing out the weights when Chris ambles over with a towel around his neck.  
  
“So, what are we going to do about this mysterious person sending the emails,” Chris asks. Jensen frowns at him, because isn’t the hospital board meant to be dealing with it? Then again, Jensen supposes that there’s not much they can actually do in a short amount of time without spending money that they don’t have on an external that doesn’t involve the police. He straightens his face and shrugs.  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“What do you mean nothing?” Chris says angrily. “This person not only knows a lot of shit about us, they’re at the hospital right now watching our every move. They’re out for blood, man.”  
  
“I thought this was something to do with Jared—some asshole trying to make him look bad,” Jensen replies and Chris snorts.  
  
“That’s what they want you to think. Mark my words: we’ll be lucky if we have jobs at the end of this. Someone is plotting against us.” Jensen laughs a little until he realises that Chris is serious. He shakes his head.  
  
“Why would this person want our heads on a plate? They’re just messing with us,” Jensen says. “Tom deserved to get caught, Jeff deserved to be exposed and, well, Jared was just unlucky.”  
  
“And what about you?” Chris asks. “They just included you for the fun of it?” Jensen shrugs and hopes that Chris gets the message. He doesn’t want to talk about it anymore; not here. He’s not sorry for kissing Jared, he’s just sorry that they’ve been singled out by this anonymous jerk.  
  
“You know, right now they’re all saying that it’s you, they think that you’re trying to even the score or something. That’s it’s some sort of jealousy thing over Jeff.”  
  
That stops Jensen in his tracks.  
  
“As if I’d be so fucking childish,” he says through gritted teeth and Chris shoots him a grave look.  
  
“Yeah well, if I was someone else and I didn’t know you, it’d make sense for it to be you. But it also makes sense for it to be Danneel, Kristen or Katie or hell, any of us on that ward. We all know about each other’s shit, and most of us have covered for one another. If someone’s willing to dig deep enough, they could finish all of us. Our careers would be dead.”  
  
Jensen bites the back the urge to state that he actually hasn’t done anything. To date, the only mess he’s gotten himself into is this whole Jared situation. It’s a regular joke amongst all of them. Jensen is the perfect one, who never makes a mistake and never does anything dangerous. He’s more than willing to admit to his penchant for barely sleeping for more than five hours at a time and drinking an unhealthy amount coffee; he’s got nothing to hide. Though, at the end of the day, Chris is his friend, and even though it sometimes takes a lot of energy to overlook all of the dumb shit he does, he still cares about him.  
  
“Fine,” he relents. “I’ll do some digging and see if I can find out anything.”

  


  
Unbeknownst to Chris, the first thing on Jensen’s agenda is finding Jared so he can apologise. He’s still not sure how they went from being friends, to Jensen trying to force personal information out of him, to attempting to start their now short-lived romantic relationship. While Jensen knows that he should just let it go, he  _can’t_. He can’t stop wanting to make things right, can’t stop thinking about Jared and about how good his mouth had tasted in the elevator. The way his stupid hair falls into his eyes, those dimples that appears when he smiles, the loud belly laugh. Jensen just misses all of it so much that he has to make sure that he doesn’t freak out and do something stupid. As he stands outside Chad’s apartment, he wonders if he isn’t at the  _doing something stupid_  part already.  
  
The door opens gently and Chad steps out, allowing Jensen to see the bruise around his left eye. It’s mostly faded by now, but there’s still a yellow tinge around it. Jensen pushes down the guilt and clears his throat.  
  
“I wanted to apologise…for punching you,” he pauses as Chad just stares at him silently.  
  
“I lost my temper and I shouldn’t have hit you.” Chad opens the door wider and beckons for Jensen to enter. Once inside, Jensen’s surprised that Chad’s place is actually pretty tidy. Thankfully, he’s not quite stupid enough to say that out loud.  
  
“Why are you really here?” Chad asks, before Jensen can even sit down. “I know that it’s not to say sorry. You could have done that days ago.”  
  
“I just want to know how he is,” Jensen says. “I get that he doesn’t want to speak to me right now, but I just need to know that he’s okay. Sandy told me that he might be here.”  
  
“Ask him for yourself,” Chad says with a weary sigh, like he no longer has the effort to converse with Jensen anymore. “Try not to fuck with his head.”

  
Jared’s got a MacBook in front of him when Jensen pushes the kitchen door open. He’s bobbing his head in time to the music pouring into his headphones and he practically scrambles back when he sees Jensen. Jensen feels his heart somersault, and he clenches his fingers to stop himself from reaching out and just  _touching_ Jared.  
  
“Fuck,” Jared says, a little breathlessly, once he’s pulled the headphones off. “You scared the crap out of me.” Jensen holds up a hand in apology and Jared closes his laptop.  
  
“Hey,” Jensen says lamely when Jared doesn’t say anything else. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”  
  
“That’s alright,” Jared replies. “I was just looking up some stuff.” He doesn’t sound angry or anything and Jensen finds that the tension between them is weird in a way that it’s never been before. They haven’t had the easiest of friendships or relationships but they’ve been able to talk to each other before. They’ve been able to communicate. At least, they had before Jensen launched himself at Jared in the elevator.  
  
“You never called,” Jensen says eventually and Jared scoffs. Jensen finally detects a bit of irritation in the other man and he steels himself for Jared’s response.  
  
 _“You_  never called.”  
  
“I was trying to give you some space,” Jensen replies weakly, even though he can already see that he’s fucked up somehow.  
  
“Right, so you suddenly decided to stop mentoring me, and then an email is sent out showing us in a compromising position the next day,” Jared says angrily. “I cover for you and, instead of you acknowledging that, I get radio silence, and you expect  _me_  to call? You expect  _me_  to make the first move?”  
  
“I’m an asshole,” Jensen mutters in defeat. “I just thought that you were avoiding me. I didn’t want to make it worse.”  
  
“What can be worse than all of this?” Jared says with a laugh. “It’s like a fucking young adult novel, surreal almost. I feel like I’ve convinced myself that none of this is real. God, I’m even getting these weird text messages now.”  
  
That sends Jensen’s blood cold as he thinks about his and Chris’ conversation. Suddenly, he’s a whole lot more interested in finding out just who this person is.  
  
“Maybe you should go to the police?” he suggest but Jared shakes his head.  
  
“I doubt that anything will happen, they’re mostly harmless.”  
  
“So long as you’re sure,” Jensen says as he sits down next to Jared. “What about us, where do we stand?”  
  
“Have you had enough time yet?”  
  
Jensen snorts as he remembers that ill-fated conversation that seems so far away. He thinks about his confrontation with Jeff.  _He was already a mess_. Jensen knows that it was a warning, but what would Jeff know?  
  
“Would you like to go for a drink with me tomorrow?” he asks and Jared grins.  
  
Surprisingly, his response is an enthusiastic kiss.

  
Jensen gets lost three times on his way down to the security office. He’s not sure why the people protecting the hospital are located in the freaking basement, but he puts it down to internalized politics. When he gets there, the office door is wide open, and there’s a guard sitting in front of an array of screens. His feet are up on the desk and he’s got his hand stuck in a giant bag of Cheetos. Jensen wrinkles his nose at the sight. He knocks on the door, which startles the guard.  
  
“I thought you were the boss!” The guard says as he swings his feet down and grabs a discarded napkin.  
  
“No, I’m a doctor here,” Jensen answers. “And you are?”  
  
“Lindberg. I’m part of the security task force. Currently stuck doing 12-hour shifts in this place.”  
  
“Right,” Jensen says slowly. “I’m actually wondering if you can tell me who has access to the tapes.”  
  
“You mean the security footage?” Lindberg asks and Jensen nods. “Well, usually the guards are the ones to lock them away and the boss is the one who can access them. But between me and you, some of the guys don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t even know if this room is locked at any point during the day. Or night.”  
  
“That’s…comforting,” Jensen says dryly, with a frustrated sigh. “Thanks for the help.”

  
“So anyone could have accessed the tapes?” Chris asks for what seems like the hundredth time. “Are there any tapes of the security room?” They’re at Chris’ apartment, with a notebook open on the table as they prepare to try and figure out who the emails could be coming from. Jensen’s not sure if it’s really the best use of their time, but it beats paperwork and his tax forms.  
  
“Wouldn’t that be a little redundant?” Jensen asks and Chris rolls his eyes. They’re both tired of not getting anywhere with their search. Jensen’s not sure if they’re going about this the right way. If it was someone at the hospital sending the emails, they could easily ask someone else to obtain the information for them. Especially in this day and age when anyone could hack into the system and get the footage without stepping foot in the episode.  
  
“Anyway, I coulda told you that going down there would get you nowhere. We’re not trying to figure out  _how_  they’re getting their information, just the  _whys and the whos_ ,” Chris says. “So far, Danneel’s at the top of my list.”  
  
“Why Danneel?” Jensen and Danneel go back a long way and he doesn’t think that she’s capable of doing something like this. She’s always been more of a behind-closed-doors gossiper.  
  
“She never liked Jared, she never liked Tom, and she certainly she never liked Jeff,” Chris stops and cocks his head to one side. “Does she like anybody?” Jensen laughs at that. He knows that Danneel isn’t as tough as she appears to be; she just takes her work seriously (when Kristen isn’t there to distract her).  
  
“What about someone who used to work on our ward – like Misha? Didn’t he used to have those epic, drunken rants about the student doctors being smartasses?”  
  
“That guy?” Chris says with a derisive snort. “I heard he got fired for opiate abuse.”  
  
“Put him on the list,” Jensen replies with a shrug. “Who’s on there so far?”  
  
“Danneel, Tom, Chris, Katie, Jeff—“  
  
“He told me that it wasn’t him,” Jensen says softly, knowing that Chris won’t have the same sentiments that he does.  
  
“Well, unlike you, I have a hard time believing anything that comes out of that guy’s mouth. Come on, Jensen, you of all people should know that he can’t be trusted.”  
  
Jensen pretends that Chris’ comment doesn’t sting.

  
They fall into a dynamic that Jensen can’t really describe, he’s not sure if it's an easy one, or one that will become harder to define as time goes by. They don’t ever take the time to define their relationship, probably because Jensen's kind of inept and this is Jared's first relationship. Jensen thinks that Jared could do a lot better than him, but he's not selfless enough to mention it. He catches Jared looking at him sometimes, as though he's a puzzle that Jared can't quite figure out. Sometimes it’s almost as though they’re just  _friends_ , but then Jared will send him a flirtatious glance or smile, and Jensen remembers that they’re an item. They’re together. It’s okay for him to feel the way he does.  
  
In light of all of Jensen’s misgivings, he does his best to keep his budding relationship with Jared under wraps. Apart from Chad’s knowing looks, he doesn’t think that anyone suspects anything. The official story is that Jensen rejected Jared’s advances so they’re avoiding each other. Given the hours that Jensen works, he figures that they might as well be. There have been a few phone calls, a couple of texts and lunches in Jensen’s office, but they haven’t really been able to see each other since he’d turned up at Chad’s apartment. So when they finally make plans to catch a movie and go for drinks, Jensen is ecstatic. He’s so upbeat that Chris asks him if he’s on something. For a second he wants to tell Chris about Jared but he catches himself and claims that he’s had far too much coffee. Chris returns to carrying out his observations with a raised eyebrow, and no further comment. It’s not as though Chris doesn’t already know that Jensen has feelings for Jared, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.  
  
Even so, when Jensen pulls up outside the movie theater a few hours later, he can’t quite shake his bad feeling. This is sort of new to him in a way. He didn’t go on many dates with Jeff, and apart from a regular dinner night with his one serious boyfriend in college, Jensen’s never really been all that big on  _dates_. He contemplates calling Chris, just to tell him, and ask for some advice, but he realises that it’s not Jared he’s worrying about. Jensen worries that something happening out there in the open, where anyone can get to them. It seems irrational of him, but he’s not one to ignore a gut feeling. He can’t do anything because soon there’s a light tap on his window; he looks up to see Jared smiling through the window, with most of his unruly hair hidden beneath a blue beanie. Jensen smiles back. He still gets that tingly, warm feeling when he pictures Jared, still wants to see that dimpled smile light up.  
  
By the time the movie (that Jensen can’t say he paid much attention to) is over, Jensen feels calmer and more rational. He decides that it must have just been nerves getting to him before. They get to the bar around ten-thirty and sit with their shoulders pressed together. The atmosphere's a little stifling, but they can at least talk to each other without having to yell. Jensen talks about his days at med school and life in general, including one memorable story that concluded with him showing up to an important meeting hung-over. Without thinking, he says, "Guess you'd know all about that.”  
  
Jared looks away for a second, and Jensen frowns. Apparently his brain to mouth filter is having some technical difficulties tonight.  
  
“I’m not that much of a drinker,” Jared says quietly. “At least not anymore, that time with the vodka was a mistake.” He looks as though he’s going to say more, but he stands up abruptly and excuses himself. Jensen bites his lip nervously as he watches Jared make his way over the bathroom. With a sigh, he pulls Jared’s glass of OJ closer to him so he can watch over it. He’s got enough firsthand knowledge of what happens when your drink is spiked (thanks to all of those cover shifts in the ER). While he waits, he taps his fingers on the bar in time to the music and thinks about how he’s going to break the tension when Jared returns. He’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice the guy next to him tripping up until he feels something cold seeping into his jeans.  
  
“Oh my god,” the guy says. “I’m  _so_ sorry. That was a total accident.” An awkward couple of moments follow in which the bartender tries to pat him down and the guy splutters so many apologies that Jensen’s head starts to hurt. By the time Jared comes back, Jensen’s pissed and ready to leave.  
  
“Sure,” Jared says when Jensen asks if they can go. “Let me just finish my drink.” He drains the glass relatively quickly and they make their way out.

  
Jensen doesn’t realise that anything is wrong until he stops for gas, fifteen minutes into their journey home. They’re about an hour away from home because they’d both agreed that it’d be easier if no one they knew was around to see them. When he gets back to the car, Jared’s face is pale and his eyes look a little glassy.  
  
“Hey, are you okay, man?” Jensen asks and Jared turns to face him. His movement is slow and sluggish and Jensen’s eyes widen.  _Shit._  
  
“I don’t feel so good,” Jared mumbles and Jensen curses under his breath. A phone goes off and Jensen pulls his out, but there’s nothing there. He looks over to see Jared blinking slowly at his own phone, like he can’t quite make out the message and he reaches over to see what’s on the screen.  
  
 _Told you I’d get you back._  
  
Jensen probably breaks more than one speed limit as he high-tails it over to the nearest hospital.

  
He calls in a favour with an old friend of his who works in the ER, and Jared’s taken in to a private room. After a tense twenty minutes in which Jared throws up several times, and passes out, Jensen’s suspicions are confirmed. Someone had slipped GHB into Jared’s drink, and even though the doctors assure him that Jared will be fine and make a full recovery, Jensen feels distressed. Who the hell would  _drug_ Jared? Who sent him that message? Jensen wishes that he had answers, but all he has is the hopelessness that he feels.  
  
“What happened?” Jared asks when he comes to. They’d pumped his stomach and attached an IV to his wrist in order to give him the fluids that his system will need.  
  
“Someone spiked your drink,” Jensen says gently. “But you’re going to be fine; they’ve removed it from your system.”  
  
“Yay,” Jared mumbles drowsily and Jensen sighs softly as he watches Jared’s eyes flutter and close. He gives up on the insurance forms soon after that and starts pacing around the room, wondering if he should call Jared’s dad or Chad. He moves to the foot of the bed, and grabs Jared’s medical chart. When Jared stirs quietly he hesitates. Once he’s sure that Jared’s still asleep, he flips the page and starts to read and scans down to check how often the nurses will be doing their observations. Then he freezes. There’s a note affixed to his chart that says ‘ _may be prone to suicide attempts’_. Jensen almost drops the chart but at the last minute he tightens his grip. He returns the chart, and leaves the room.  
  
Jensen tried his best not to intervene, despite the fact that he was itching to. He’d busied himself with the insurance forms, but that note just sends his mind spiralling into a mess of thoughts. He can’t keep his curiosity at bay anymore, not after what he’s just read. There’s no one at the desk on the main area of the ward, so Jensen makes his way over quickly and pulls up Jared’s file. After glancing at the clock briefly, he begins to read.

  
By morning, Jensen’s back at his apartment, while Chad drives down to the hospital to take Jared home. Jensen tells Chad about the text and Chad says that he’ll deal with it. Jensen’s not sure why the police being involved didn’t register with him sooner. He’s shocked to see them when they come knocking on his door.  
  
“Did you notice anything suspicious at the bar last night?” one of the officer asks and Jensen blinks at him, and rubs at his eyes from under his glasses. He can already tell that forgoing his contacts was a wise decision.  
  
“No, I didn’t,” he says. “I was supposed to be watching his drink, but someone spilt beer on me and I got distracted. That must have been when they slipped it in.” The officer gives him a long, hard look and Jensen flinches. He hopes that the officer can’t see the guilt written all over his face. He’s not the guilty party here, but he feels responsible for what happened.  
  
“Wait, there’s more,” he says hoarsely. “Afterwards, there was a message on his phone, something about getting him back. I don’t know who sent it.” The officer writes down something in his small notebook while Jensen waits. He wants to mention what Jared said before about getting other messages, but he can’t get the words to come out. Plus it’d feel wrong anyway. All Jensen wants to do right now is go and see Jared. He doesn’t even care if people realise that they were together last night, not anymore.  
  
Not for the first time, he wonders what he’s gotten himself into.

  


  
It takes a whole day for Jensen to talk himself out of going to see Jared. It's only the thought of Mr. Padalecki firing him that keeps him at bay. He can't afford to lose his job right now; he'll go insane without some kind of stability. By the time he's finished procrastinating, his apartment is spotless and his DVD collection is perfectly alphabetized. He's attempted to call Jared six times and chickened out six times. Jensen wonders what it is about Jared that makes him regress into some sort of teenage boy. Why's he so caught up over him? Why is Jared so deep under his skin? Jensen doesn't realise that he's blocking things out until Jared shows up on his front door with a sheepish smile. It all comes rushing back to him: the file, the fucking medical file that he just hadn't been able to stay away from. The sinking feeling returns to his stomach and Jensen takes a deep breath.  
  
"I'm sorry," Jared is saying when Jensen tunes back in. "I shouldn't have come." It takes Jensen a few moments to realise what Jared is saying but when he does, his hand shoots out and grabs onto Jared's arm. Jared looks pale and there are dark rings under his eyes. He's only got on a threadbare hoodie and Jensen guides him in. It's fucking freezing outside.  
  
"Sorry about that," Jensen says as he hands Jared a glass of water and joins him couch. "My head’s been all over the place today."  
  
"Ditto," Jared says with a grin. Jensen can't bring himself to return it. He wonders if he's ever seen Jared's real smile. It's an odd, misplaced thought and Jensen shakes his head, as if he’s trying to clear it. He wishes that he could come clean and tell Jared what he's done, but Jared looks worn down and burnt out, and Jensen doesn't want to give him a reason to leave. He doesn't want to lie either. So he makes up his mind, he’s coming clean. As he sits next to Jared on the couch, he has every intention of telling him what he's done. Yet, his phone rings as he gears himself up, and it startles both of them. Jensen ignores it at first but it doesn't stop ringing. Jared gives him a look and Jensen exhales slowly and answers the call.  
  
Jared’s asleep on the couch next to him when the call ends. Jensen doesn’t have the heart to wake him up.

Jensen gets to the hospital bright and early the next morning. Caffeine is running through his bloodstream, breathing life into him. He bustles into Jim Beaver's office with as much cheer as he can muster. Jim - Professor Beaver - is the top cardiac surgeon at the hospital and Jensen's mentor of sorts. He'd called last night about a rare, innovative surgery that the hospital would be carrying out. At the moment, Jim’s got him down on the list to observe, but if things go to plan, Jensen might be able to assist. It doesn’t occur to him until he gets to the meeting that he probably wouldn’t be observing if Tom or Jeff were still working at the hospital.  
  
He manages to get through the meeting unscathed, and even has a few points of his own to add to the discussion. By lunchtime, quiet murmurs turn into loud whispers and eventually Kristen and Danneel straight up accuse him of trying to take advantage of the ongoing situation of Tom and Jeff’s recent unemployment.  
  
“Kristen’s been working here longer than you,” Danneel says trivially as she pokes at her salad. Jensen instantly regrets accepting her invitation to lunch at a nearby bistro. He can’t even escape to his office without looking a total jackass. “I would have thought that she’d have been a shoo-in for this operation.”  
  
“I guess I just don’t have the right connections,” Kristen adds wistfully, even though her eyes say a different story. Jensen looks at them both for a second, but chooses not say anything and goes back to his parmesan chicken. Unfortunately for him, the probing doesn’t end there.  
  
“How is Jared, by the way?” Danneel asks. “I haven’t seen him for a few days.” Jensen’s fork clatters down onto his plate loudly. He tries to make himself look less guilty by taking a sip of his water, but he can tell that Danneel’s seen whatever reaction that she was expecting.  
  
“I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe you should ask Chad.” He’s pulling out his wallet before either of them can reply, and he’s slapping a couple of bills onto the table when Kristen speaks.  
  
“Chad wasn’t the one getting hot and heavy with him in the elevator.” Jensen rolls his eyes, his chair screeching loudly as he stands up hastily. Danneel at least has the decency to look a little ashamed, but Kristen obviously has a chip on shoulder that’s the size of fucking Texas.  
  
He doesn’t bother saying goodbye.

  
When the next email arrives, it leaves Jensen with a bad taste in his mouth. He’s on the ward, checking his phone when it comes through. He looks up quickly to see if anyone is watching him, but the people not tending to patients are all on their phones anyway. They’re all probably watching the video of Danneel and Kristen snorting blow in a room that looks suspiciously like the on-call room. Jensen wasn't even aware that there was a security camera in there. It's an unsettling thought. He clicks out of the video, pockets his phone, and walks back out onto the ward to tend to his next patient. Hours later, after a biopsy and an aorta replacement operation, he collapses behind his desk and lets his head fall onto the table. Danneel and Kristen's lifestyles are no secret but getting caught doing that in the damn hospital is a career ender.  
  
Selfishly, Jensen wonders if they all think he's the person behind it now. He also wonders if this person has anything incriminating on  _him_.  
  
He's always kept his personal life private, besides, it's not like there are any dirty secrets in his closet. He mostly has nothing to hide, and this vicious person would have to dig  _deep_  to find anything on him. With that thought in mind, he looks down at the patient file in front of him, the one that his forehead had been pressed to moments ago. Jensen doesn’t make a habit of leaving files on his desk. He frowns, picks the file up and then his mouth drops open as the guilt floods through him. Shit.  
  
Self-deceit has never been one of his best qualities.  
  


  
_It happens when Jensen’s still a surgeon down in the ER. Her name is Angela Olsen. She's brought in with a suspected concussion and has deep lacerations on her arm. It’s nothing fatal, and they tend to her wounds quickly. They give her some morphine for the pain and monitor her, and Jensen still remembers the nurse, Alex, he's quiet and efficient but he keeps eyeing Jeff warily. Jeff's usually up on the cardiac ward, but the ER department is backed up at the moment, so he's lending an extra hand. He shouldn’t be, Jensen can smell a faint whiff of alcohol; but as long as Jeff’s not called into surgery, there’s nothing he can do. Jeff smirks when he catches Jensen looking at him and he mouths ‘later’, before returning back to the file. For some reason Jensen’s stomach recoils. He and Jeff have been doing…whatever it is that they’re doing for a couple of months now, and while Jensen does like him, he worries sometimes._  
  
 _They don’t realise that anything’s amiss until the machines start beeping. Alex calls out for a crash team and Jensen goes running into the bay, watching as the defibrillators are set up. He grabs the notes and flips through them, freezing when he spots the morphine dosage: 200mg. Fuck._  
  
 _“Who administered the morphine?” he asks Alex who’s watching the proceedings with an anxious look on his face. 200mg is a lethal amount and if anyone catches wind of this then Jeff’s done for, because this is his handwriting. Angela must have gone into respiratory depression, and then arrested with no one was around to administer the appropriate treatment._  
  
 _“Dr. Morgan did,” Alex says shakily. “He said he’d do it while I chased up her CT scans, said that way there’d be less work to in the morning.” Jensen knows how much Jeff hates night shifts; sometimes he wonders why Jeff even became a doctor at all, especially when he likes to party before shifts._  
  
 _“Okay,” he says. “Okay. There must have been some other complication that we missed. She’ll be fine.”_  
  
 _Jensen’s proven a liar not a minute later when a voice announces the TOD, “Time of death, three-fifteen.”_  
  
*  
  
 _When Jensen finally finds Jeff, he’s laughing with some nurse, as if he hasn’t got a care in the world. Angers floods Jensen and he marches up to Jeff and demands his attention. The nurse slinks away, after aiming a contemptuous look in Jensen’s direction. Jensen looks around the ward before pulling Jeff into one of the empty private rooms and flinging the door shut._  
  
 _“Do you want to explain to me why you gave Angela Olsen a ridiculous amount of morphine?” He throws the notes in Jeff’s face, and Jeff catches them, flips them open. His expression changes when he sees what’s written there in his handwriting. Before Jensen can stop him, he’s tearing out the page and balling it up._  
  
 _“It’s fine. You’ve stabilised her right? Did anyone administer naloxone?”_  
  
 _“She died three minutes ago,” Jensen says coldly. “You gave her an overdose and she **died**! Died while you were flirting on duty!” Jeff’s face is ashen and he looks bewildered like he doesn’t understand what Jensen is saying. He holds up the hand with the balled up paper inside it. _  
  
 _“Who else has seen this?” He demands to know._  
  
 _“No one but me,” Jensen says and he can see the cogs and wheels turning in Jeff’s brain. “You can’t lie about this Jeff, just tell the truth or I will.”_  
  
 _“Come on, Jensen,” Jeff pleads. “You really want to make a ruckus over an extra zero? It was an **accident**!”_  
  
 _“A patient **died**_ _Jeff!” Jensen hisses back. “We have a duty to tell her family the truth.”_  
  
 _“Says here that she lives alone, has no children or family,” Jeff says as he looks down at the file. “There’s no one to tell.”_  
  
 _“That doesn’t make it okay,” Jensen says but he can hear the way his voice breaks, he can feel his resistance being worn down. Jeff takes a step closer to him; eyes warm as he eyes Jensen’s lips._  
  
 _“It’ll be our secret,” he whispers, like he’s talking about something a lot less melancholy than death._  
  
 _Jensen hates himself for responding when Jeff kisses him._

  
Jensen falls out of the memory when he hears ping coming from his computer. He looks and sees he’s received a new email.  
  


## 

  
He barely blinks, just hits the reply button and types a short response, asking the person to reveal their identity. Predictably, there’s no response. He opens up a blank email next, and writes up some bullshit about how he has to pull out of the operation due to a family issue. Jensen pauses before he hits the send button. He deliberates over it, considers deleting, consigning it to his drafts folder until he knows that this isn’t a trick. Eventually he goes with the latter, decides to check with Jeff first. Without thinking, he reaches down and flips open the file. The balled up page is there staring up at him.  
  
Jensen feels sick.

  
By the time Jensen pulls up outside of Jeff’s apartment he’s practically shaking with rage. He puts the car into park, ready to climb out when Jeff’s door opens. He slides down in his seat little as he watches, even though it’s dark outside, and he’s across the street. Someone steps out of the house, Jensen stares, realising that the figure seems very familiar. Jeff says a couple of words to the person, and his hands fly up the way they do when he’s angry. After a few seconds he slams the door and the visitor turns around. The person looks in Jensen’s direction briefly before walking away.  
  
It’s Jared.  
  
He’s not sure how long he sits there and has his silent freak-out, but after what seems like an age he gets out of the car and makes his way over to Jeff’s. He hammers at the door until Jeff opens it, and Jensen pushes his way in.  
  
“Hello to you too,” Jeff says coldly when he’s managed to close the door. “There must be  _something_  in the air today. You’re the second visitor I’ve had today who’s been less than pleased with me. I suppose that you’re a special case.” Jensen’s mind instantly flits to Jared but he shakes his head. This isn’t about Jared; this particular matter only concerns Jeff. He pulls the folded page out of his pocket, holds it up, crumples it into a ball and throws it at Jeff; it bounces off his chest and hits the ground. It’s possibly a tad dramatic but he’s not really thinking straight. Jeff rolls his eyes in Jensen’s direction but bends down to pick it up.  
  
“I don’t know what game it is that you’re playing, but all of this - the emails, the way you’re treating your former colleagues – it needs to stop.”  
  
Jeff doesn’t answer. He’s too busy staring down at the sheet with a haunted look on his face. Jensen swallows hard, heart pounding in his chest as he watches Jeff.  
  
“It’s not me,” Jeff says. “But I think you know that don’t you.” Jensen does know that, knows that Jeff will always go to extreme lengths to cover his own ass. Still, telling himself that it’s Jeff is a lot better than considering the fact is that someone else knows what happened that night. Someone out there has enough information to make sure that he and Jeff never practise again.  
  
“That person sending the emails, they sent this to me – made me give up that artificial heart surgery.” Jensen can’t help the bitter tone of his voice, and he waits for Jeff’s mocking comment and sneer. Neither come; he simply gives Jensen a sad look. One that Jensen’s never seen before.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This is my fault.”  
  
“Damn right it is!” Jensen snaps. “I’m not even sure what this person plans do with it, but if this ever gets out, we could  _lose_ our medical licenses.”  
  
“ _You_ could,” Jeff says as matter-of-factly. “I’m done. I’m done with being a doctor. See, I have a lot more skeletons in my closet than you do, Jensen. And I’ve been getting emails too. The email about Tom? I gave whoever it was the information; I ratted him out.”  
  
“I’m sure that really kept you up at night,” Jensen snaps, not caring that Jeff looks completely torn and broken down. He deserves it, Jensen thinks bitterly. He deserves  _worse_  than this. “What else have you done that’s so bad?”  
  
Jeff laughs humorlessly, and Jensen suddenly notices that his beard is greyer than it was a couple of weeks ago. “The real question is  _what haven’t I done_?”  
  
Jensen can’t argue with that, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t ask about Jared even though he wants to.  
  
“You’ve interacted with this person?” Jensen says, slowly catching on to what Jeff said a few moments ago.  
  
“Well, yeah,” Jeff says gruffly. “You really think that I’d sit back and ignore the emails that practically showed me buck naked? Of course I interacted with them.”  
  
“What else have they said?”  
  
“Not a lot, I offered them information in return for them laying off me and Jared, only for Tom to go and—anyway, yeah, I’ve been talking to ‘em, and no, I don’t know who they are.”  
  
“For Tom to go and do what?” Jensen says, a familiar sense of trepidation is churning in his stomach and his mind goes into overdrive. Jeff doesn’t answer, just looks away and Jensen moves to lean on the wall, suddenly regretting the fact that he didn’t take this into Jeff’s lounge.  
  
“Jared’s drink, that was Tom,” he says slowly, as if a light bulb has suddenly been switched on inside his brain. “Why?”  
  
“Jared knew that we were peddling drugs out of the hospital. Caught us talking about it.”  
  
“ _We_?!”  
  
“Like I said, Jensen, there’s a lot that you don’t know,” Jeff says sagely. “I wouldn’t be  
  
surprised if Jared was the person behind all these emails. He’d have had a chip the size of Texas on his shoulder before coming back here.”  
  
Jensen needs a fucking drink.  
  
“Why would he send us all of that stuff about himself and…you,” Jensen says angrily.  
  
“To cover his tracks,” Jeff replies with a shrug. “In all honesty, if I wanted revenge. I’d do something similar.”  
  
“Luckily for me, he’s  _not_  you!” Jensen retorts.  
  
“So, it’s finally official then, you and him,” Jeff says, and then he smirks. The cold, ugly sneer that Jensen’s been expecting since he got here. Except now he can see it for what it is. A mask designed to hide Jeff’s insecurity, a wall of sorts. “I’ve seen more of you in the time you’ve been sticking it to the kid than I did when we were together.”  
  
“Of course you have,” Jensen says, and he stands, rolling his eyes for good measure. “In those last few months, I’d have done anything to get away from you. You disgust me.”  
  
“You know where the door is,” Jeff says in a sing-song voice. “I’ll expect another visit from you soon though?”  
  
Jensen laughs in spite of himself. It’s harsh and bitter, even to his ears. “I’d tell you not to hold your breath but…that actually might be a good thing for all of us. Fuck you.”  
  
His heart is still thudding in his chest when he finally reaches his apartment.

  
“So it’s definitely not Jeff,” Jared says around a spoonful of ice cream. “You sure about that?” Mr. Padalecki removed him from two weeks of rotations and so, Jared started hanging out at Jensen’s apartment. Jensen’s off for a few days, pretending to sort out his ‘emergency’.  
  
“Positive,” Jensen says, eyes tracking the spoon as Jared’s tongue darts around it. They haven’t gone any further than heavy make-outs. Hell, their elevator session is probably the furthest they’ve gone. He’s not sure why that is; both of them seem to be on the right page but there’s always a limit, always a point where one of them pulls back with some excuse, like now.  
  
“I’m kind of tired,” Jared says as he extracts himself from Jensen’s arms. He turns away, busying himself with finding out where his spoon’s gotten to.  
  
“Okay,” Jensen says warily. “Okay, what’s happening here? With us?”  
  
“I need you to be honest with me,” Jared says, and Jensen gets the feeling that Jared’s been waiting to say that for a while.  
  
“About what?” Jensen says coolly, not liking the way that Jared’s eyes are piercing into his as if he knows all of Jensen’s deepest and darkest secrets. Jared’s the one who’s just lied to him by omission. Heck, they’ve  _both_  just lied to each other by omission. He’d told Jared that he’d gone to Jeff’s, and Jared hadn’t seemed too bothered. Truth be told, he’s not sure how well, ‘ _I helped Jeff cover up the death of a patient,’_  would go down, and Jared’s dad is kind of influential when it comes to Jensen maintaining his career. Still, there’s a part of him that thinks that he should just tell Rosenbaum or someone, before this escalates into an even bigger mess.  
  
"I know that you looked at my chart and my medical file," Jared informs him. He says it so nonchalantly that Jensen wonders why he's bringing it up at all. But he can see the tense line of Jared’s shoulders, the way his lips are pinched, and the flat look in his eyes.  _Shit._ Jensen scrambles to find something to say.  
  
"I know that you were at Jeff's last night,” he blurts out, unable to stop himself. Jared falters for a second and Jensen watches a myriad of emotions flit across his face before he settles on anger.  
  
"I'm sorry," Jensen says quickly, barely resisting the urge to smack himself in the face. "That--just forget that I said that."  
  
"You've got some nerve," Jared says angrily. "Yes, I was at Jeff's. He's not appealing the hearing anymore and I wanted to know why, to see if he's actually sorry for what he did." Jensen knows that Jeff hadn't been apologetic at all.  
  
“You know what he said?” Jared asks, and Jensen shakes his head even though he knows the question is rhetorical. “He said that I should have learned to keep my mouth shut.”  
  
“I…I’m sorry.” Jensen’s at a loss of words. He doesn’t know what to say, how to comfort Jared. Doesn’t know how to explain that he hasn’t been able to shake Jeff’s suggestion about Jared being the mysterious emailer. Doesn’t know how to say that the more Jared’s name comes up, the longer it takes Jensen to convince himself that it can’t be Jared.  
  
“Don’t apologise for him,” Jared says with a despondent sigh. “Just tell me why you did what you did.”  
  
“I had to know, Jared. Look, I get that you didn’t want to tell me, I get it. But after everything, after what Jeff’s said, I just…I needed to know. It was driving me crazy.”  
  
“Why? What does it matter what Jeff of all people says?” Jared practically yells. “It’s not like I’m a quivering mess who needs saving. Did you ever stop and think that maybe I just wanted to leave the past behind?”  
  
“No,” Jensen says truthfully. “But I like you; I want to know  _everything_  about you, be it bad or good. And, yes okay, that’s maybe not why I looked at them but please give me a chance to explain.”  
  
“You have five minutes.”  
  
“I spoke to Jeff and he said that only reason he started shit with you, was because he saw me looking at you. Despite the fact that I turned a blind eye to all of his indiscretions until he promised to be faithful and I just, stopped noticing, he decided to hook up with you and take out his anger or jealousy or whatever on you. Making it  _my_  fault that he did what he did. If I hadn’t had looked, you’d be fine!” Jensen lets out a huge breath when he finishes speaking, eyes darting up to peer at Jared.  
  
“So you read my file as what?” Jared asks in confusion. “Some form of punishment? More shit to add to your ‘woe is me’ list?”  
  
“Jared—“  
  
“No, you wanted to know what happened, so I’ll tell you,” Jared spits out angrily, leaving Jensen wishing that he hadn’t said anything at all. “It started when my mom walked out. She kissed me on my forehead, said she was going to church or something and then, just never came back. I got an email later, with pictures of her and her new boyfriend Hector. Who leaves their family for a guy called Hector? Anyway, I was fifteen at the time and I was pissed. She divorced my dad soon after, demanded full custody of my siblings and me, but I refused to go.  
  
“I didn’t want to leave my dad by himself. So, my brother and sister moved to wherever the hell she was and I stayed, thinking that my dad would have more time for me. But he didn’t and soon my brother and sister stopped calling, we stopped talking and it was just me. My dad would work hours and hours, while I sat at home. Felt like I’d been abandoned. So one day I went and sat in his office, rummaged through his drawers and I found the key to the liquor cabinet,” Jared pauses, and Jensen thinks about asking him to stop. He feels dirty, wrong, and ashamed; he hasn’t earned the right to listen to this—he just went and forced Jared’s hand.  
  
God, he’s turning into Jeff.  
  
“It was just small sips at first but then I’d go to parties, guzzle down the hard stuff, do drugs, anything. I just wanted my dad to notice me, y’know? But he never did. I called my mom once, and she was sympathetic at first. Said she missed me, but then she was like, “Oh, honey, why’d you think I left?” and I just lost it. I hated her for giving up on him. He tried, but he just didn’t know what to do with me, and I was at that age where rebelling seemed like the cool thing to do. By the time I got to undergrad, I was a  _mess_. My dad spent more time cleaning up my mess than he did with me.  
  
“But I got through it, I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, and my dad made that happen. I can’t hate him for that, and I worry sometimes that I’m not here on merit, but he swears that I am. And, he always said he was proud. But he still never had time for me and I kept drinking and fucking around. Until I saw you, the day we kissed, I sat down and promised myself that I’d sort myself out. I didn’t know who you were; I’ve never even had a relationship that lasted longer than a night. But then the stuff with Jeff happened. He paid attention to me – enough that I should have been suspicious – and it was nice, at first, especially when I found out that you were taken. And well, you know all this.  
  
“I’ll never really know what was going through my head, but Jeff was making noise about how I was going to be struck off or something if I didn’t comply with his  _wishes_. I finally told him to fuck off; I said that I was going to my dad, to tell him everything. And I got trashed, obviously, but I had this headache and the drink wasn’t numbing the pain, so I got out some pills – some old pain meds from when I broke my wrist, and I don’t remember taking them, don’t know if—“  
  
“Stop!” Jensen can’t listen to any more, can’t take any more of Jared’s choked up voice spilling his heart out. “I’m sorry that I pushed, just…stop, you don’t have to say anymore.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Jared says with a bitter laugh. “You wanted to know, so shut the fuck up and listen.” Jensen’s mouth snaps shut and he swallows, mentally berating himself for being such an idiot.  
  
“My dad came in, found me passed on out with my head on the table, and a fucking sea of pills around me. He freaked out, drove me to the hospital and they pumped my stomach out. They found traces of the pills, but said that the amount of alcohol in my system was probably the most worrying issue.”  
  
“What happened after that?” Jensen asks, just to keep the conversation from going stagnant. He’s just not ready for that, not ready to face Jared’s accusing glare.  
  
“They said it was attempted suicide, that’s what,” Jared says tiredly. “I’m sure that it wasn’t; I would never do that to my dad, but…I can’t remember. They sent me to some rehab center for six months, made me do detox and daily therapy sessions until I was fucking climbing the walls. Then I spent a couple of months down in Texas, with an aunt, just helping her out and so on. My mother turned up, spent the whole two days she was with me crying her eyes out. Like that would change anything.”  
  
“Jared, I…I’m glad that you’re better now,” Jensen says, trying his best to keep his voice steady. “If I’d have known…”  
  
“You’d have felt sorry for me?” Jared interjects. “Or maybe won a couple hundred dollars in the betting pool? I’ve always wondered about that first email, whether or not they actually knew what happened or if they were just being facetious.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jensen says numbly, and Jared smiles at him sadly. The sight breaks Jensen’s heart, and right now, in this moment, he hates himself a little.  
  
“So now that it’s all out, are you going to disappear again, stop calling me and then claim that you’re giving me space?”  
  
“Jeff’s always going to have this hold over me,” Jensen says. “And it just makes it hard for me to not second guess myself and other people, like  _you,_  and I hate it. I should let you go; this – whatever _this_ is – should not be your first proper relationship. But…I just can’t walk away.”  
  
“You should talk to someone about Jeff,” Jared says, ignoring the last part of Jensen’s statement. “That’s not healthy, and if I can at least try to get over everything that happened, so can you. I’d even be willing to come along, for moral support. I can get you my therapist’s number. Maybe she can sort something out.”  
  
After all of the shit he’s just put Jared through, the idea still kind of makes him feel uneasy. He’s a doctor. He’s supposed to treat people; he’s not meant to fall apart. Jared’s right though. It’s not healthy. Jensen supposes that it makes sense for him to get some kind of therapy  
  
“After everything, you’d come along with me?” Jensen says in disbelief. “Why?”  
  
“Because it helps to have someone there,” Jared replies. “My dad was there some days and it helped. I mean, it sucked that it took him thinking that I’d tried to kill myself to finally just be there for me, but at least he was there in the end. My mom was off somewhere crying into her fucking wine, while my dad was crying  _with_  me. Probably out of guilt, but it helped. And also because I did just suggest it to you.”  
  
Jensen smiles at that, says, “That’s…I’m really glad that something positive came out of your therapy session.”  
  
“Me and you,” Jared looks down at his hands, fingers clenching and unclenching as he speaks. “Is it supposed to be this hard?”  
  
“Relationships are always hard,” Jensen answers. “If you can work your way through all the bullshit and just  _try_ , then it’s worth it.”  
  
“I’m trying, man, I really am, but there’s always something,” Jared says. “I can’t walk away either, it’s as if my head is saying  _run_ , but my heart’s got an anchor that’s tied to you.” It takes Jensen a while to figure out how to respond to that, but eventually he decides to try and lighten the mood a little.  
  
“That was beautiful,” Jensen says solemnly, and Jared gives him a hard stare for a few seconds before he breaks out into a smile and hits Jensen’s arm playfully.  
  
“I’m trying to be serious here,” Jared says. “I want us to be serious. About each other. No more Jeff crap floating over us, just me and you.”  
  
“Sounds good to me,” Jensen says.  
  
The only trouble is that they’ve been down this road before, and it’s a fucking bumpy one.


	4. Chapter 4

Jensen spends the next two days tucked under his covers with his television set to CNN. Somehow the fact that the world seems to be more fucked up than usual puts his drama in perspective. He doesn't feel all that bad about missing the surgery, though he misses his patients, and his daily grind. They at least give him something to do, an excuse to not lie around being maudlin. Jared, to his credit, has tasked himself with cheering Jensen up. Jensen's not sure how much of Jared's positive attitude is genuine, given that he now knows about Tom  _drugging_  him, as well as the fact that the police claim that they can't do anything without any proof. That makes Jensen feel even shittier than he does already, so he picks himself up on the third day, cleans up his apartment and invites Jared over. Things are still kind of tumultuous. Though, they're both still trying, and they have a few therapy sessions lined up.  
  
When Jensen mentions it to Chris over coffee at Starbucks, Chris raises an eyebrow. Jensen’s sitting in usual spot, with his laptop out in front of him so he can work on his research paper and make up wild stories in his head about what the other five people with laptops in front of them are writing about. Hey, it’s a way to pass the time.  
  
"Not to be a downer or anything, but therapy this early on in the relationship doesn't sound like a good sign."  
  
"I think it'll be good for us, I mean, we didn't just meet out of the blue one day. Like it or not, we have history," Jensen says defensively, because, while he kind of agrees, that’s more to do with his issues with therapy in general. He’s a medical doctor; he fixes people with his  _hands_ , has CT scans, MRI scans and other machinery to find out what’s wrong with them. Sometimes, he wonders how therapists and psychiatrists and whoever the fuck else diagnose these people just by looking at them and deciphering their words, their actions, and their behaviour; hence why Intro to Psychology had been his limit during his college days.  
  
“Right,” Chris says slowly. “And any therapist worth their money will tell you to nip this in the bud before one of you gets hurt.”  
  
“Seriously?” Jensen says, as he begins to get a little irritated. “Is it too much to ask for you to be supportive right now? I…I really like him.”  
  
“You  _really liked_  Jeff and look how that turned out,” Chris shoots back quickly and Jensen sighs. He’s not sure why everything always comes back down to Jeff.  
  
“Like you can talk,” Jensen says instead of letting the conversation revolve around Jeff. “What about you and Katie, are you still pretending that you’re not into each other?”  
  
“Women are fucking weird,” Chris mumbles, though his voice sounds a little off. Jensen flashes him a look of concern but Chris shakes it off.  
  
“Hey, did you ever email this person back?” Jensen asks, eyeing the guy across their table suspiciously. It’s just some dumb college kid but still, Jensen’s not taking any chances. Jensen lowers his voice, “I sent one a couple of days ago, but I got nothing back.”  
  
Chris gives him a look of disbelief and snorts, “You’re damn right I did. I mean, you’re my best friend, I’ve got your back.” Chris is lying; he’s not meeting Jensen’s eyes, he’s looking past him, at some spot behind his shoulder. He’s a terrible liar, always has been but Jensen’s never said anything, so Chris doesn’t know.  
  
“I told them where to look for evidence of Danneel and Kristen being fucking stupid and jeopardising the rest of us,” Chris admits eventually as he finally looks Jensen in the eye. “We’ve all got skeletons in our closet.”  
  
“Like what?” Jensen says, as the memory of Angela Olsen flits around in his mind again, over and over, like some kind of fucking reel.  
  
“Like shit that I’m not proud of, shit that’s nobody’s business,” Chris’s says quietly. “But it’s like they say, ‘We’re all entitled to have our secrets’.”  
  
“Dude, did you just quote a line from  _The Notebook_?” Jensen says with a laugh, taking great delight in the way Chris blushes. “I didn’t know that you could even read man, when’d you learn?”  
  
“Asshole,” Chris grumbles but there’s a smile on his face, and they don’t touch the subject of the emails again.  
  
Jensen pretends that he’s not thinking that whatever it is that Chris is hiding will blow up in his face. Especially if Danneel and Kristen find out what he did.

  
Their first therapy session is a disaster – on Jensen’s part at least. He’s surprised to find that he knows the therapist, a former classmate of his called Lauren. She probably knows things about him that no one else does, yet they always go through large periods of time with no contact. Her presence throws him off more than he’d like to admit. He fumbles through his words, often has no answers, and, in the end, he spends the rest of the session just sitting there listening to Jared talk. Jared must pick up on his unease because at the forty minute mark, he tells Lauren that he thinks that they’re done.  
  
“Of course,” Lauren says with a smile. Jensen’s not sure if he’s charmed or annoyed by her clipped accent. “But would you mind if I spoke to Jensen alone for a few moments?” Jared shoots him a questioning look and Jensen shrugs.  
  
“I’ll be outside.” Jensen squirms in his seat uncomfortably as Jared leaves. There’s a beat before Lauren turns to him and lets out a gust of air.  
  
“Seriously, you didn’t tell me that you’d gotten yourself such a  _cute_  boyfriend!” she practically squeals, and Jensen rolls his eyes. “Honestly I think I’m just going to prescribe lots of sex, and I’ll knock half off my bill if you let me watch.” Her accent’s completely different, back to its usual American-ness. Jensen’s not sure if that’s even a word.  
  
“You didn’t tell me that you’re channelling Miss Marple when you’re on the clock.”  
  
“Oh hush,” she chides him gently. “People react better to that accent.”  
  
“So what’s the verdict?” Jensen asks, because he’s not going to forget why he’s here anytime soon.  
  
“I definitely think that you’ve made a good first step. He seems to really like you, I’m just not sure about you…” She trails off, sits back and cross her legs. Jensen does his best not to fidget like some runny nosed five year old, he really does.  
  
“I  _do_  like him,” he insists. “Enough to agree to this torture. That should say something.”  
  
“Alright sweetheart, if you say so,” Lauren says after a short moment. “I think I’ll refer you to my colleague for your joint sessions. Jared says that he already has someone he sees one-on-one, so I’m happy to pencil you in for your private sessions.”  
  
“Uh,” Jensen says hesitantly. “What private sessions?”  
  
“Jensen, honey, I’ve known you for ten years. You’ve got some serious talking and character building to do. You’re a mess.”  
  
“Gee, thanks,” he mutters. She grins at him.

  
  
  
When Jensen joins Jared in the waiting room, he frowns at the flirty smile on Jared’s face. He’d expected shit to be awkward after his neurotic behaviour during their session.  
  
Jared laughs when Jensen states this.  
  
“We might have only been dating or whatever for a short while,” he says, “but I’m kind of used to you being a little…high strung. You bitched me out for like an hour when I spilt  _water_  on your Egyptian rug.”  
  
“It  _toughens_  the texture,” Jensen protests.  
  
“I know, babe,” Jared says, and the endearment makes Jensen’s heart jolt in his chest a little. He tends to hate them, but it doesn’t sound all that bad when Jared’s saying it.  
  
“Hey, can I stay over at your place tonight?”  
  
Jensen’s first though is  _sex—God, he wants to have sex_. And seriously, Jensen’s thirty one years old. He should be past having freak outs over sex by now.  
  
“My dad has this…dinner with one of his business partners,” Jared says, apparently oblivious to Jensen’s discomfort. “He says that it’s strictly business, but last time he said that I had to sleep with my iPod blasting in my ears at full volume.”  
  
It takes Jensen a while to understand but when he does, he pulls a face. “ _Gross_. Your house is huge, can’t you just...move to another room?”  
  
“I’d rather stay with you,” Jared says, and then he does that thing where his bangs fall into his eyes, and he gives Jensen a coy smile. And seriously, how can Jensen say no to that?  
  
“Okay,” he nods. “You can stay over. We’ll make a night of it.”  
  
“Like we did the other day?” Jared says. “Because while that was nice and all, I was hoping that we could so something a little more  _risqué_.” He does an abortive hip wiggle and waggles his eyebrows suggestively. Jensen ends up laughing so hard that he practically doubles over.  
  
“Get out of my waiting room,” Lauren says as she emerges from her office. “I don’t need you two messing up my patients by being all cute and sh— _annoying_.” Jensen sticks his tongue out at her, as she catches her slip, and winks as they saunter out of the room.  
  
Perhaps this therapy thing isn’t such a bad idea after all.

  


  
The sex thing doesn’t really work out. They’re rutting against each and kissing messily and Jensen’s into it and he can feel Jared’s cock rubbing against his thigh when his guilty conscience kicks in.  
  
“Wait,” Jensen say. “I can’t do this.” He pulls back, extracting himself from Jared as he does. Jared's not happy, he can see that and he hates that it's taken his conscience this long to fucking man up and tell the truth for once. Not that he even knows what he's going to say, how to break it to Jared. Just, there's no way that Jensen can keep this to himself any longer, and it he doesn't want to blindside Jared when it gets out.  
  
"I have something to tell you," he says in a raspy voice. "It's important."  
  
"Yeah," Jared says with a short laugh. "I'm getting that."  
  
"Years ago, I helped Jeff cover up something, at work," Jensen says, and pauses as Jared leans over the bed to grab his shirt and pull it on over his head. "He’d been drinking and I don't know, he messed up and wrote down the wrong dosage of morphine."  
  
"Okay," Jared says, with a puzzled look. "That's not so bad, I'm guessing you caught the mistake and both agreed not to say anything." Jared's giving him a very pointed look, as if he wants Jensen to agree, nod and just end the conversation. As much as Jensen wants to, he can't do that.  
  
"She died. Even though he wrote it down he didn’t realise," Jensen clarifies. "I knew that he'd been drinking and I said nothing."  
  
"Why are you telling me this?" Jared says suddenly, voice tight with some emotion that Jensen can't identity. "Are you trying to, I don't know, push me away or something?"  
  
Jensen shakes his head vigorously, " _No_ , no. I just, I wanted you to know why I was at Jeff's. You never asked."  
  
It is not strictly the truth, but it probably sounds more intelligible than  _I just want you to know everything about me, because I **made**  you tell me why you vanished for a year,_ which Jensen would probably blurt out if he didn't have his wits about him.  
  
"I didn't ask because I trust you," Jared says tiredly. "As for this Jeff matter, that's what he does. He uses people, manipulates them. You might not think that the emails are from him, Jensen. But how well did you know Jeff? Just...ask yourself that."  
  
"It's not as cut and dry as that," Jensen says, and it’s almost like a knife to the gut when Jared shakes his head sadly.  
  
“All I wanted was one night not to be clouded over by all of this stupid bullshit,” he says, as he stands up and locates his discarded jeans. “Just one night, but…I get it. I’ll...I’ll see you when I see you.”  
  
He doesn’t give Jensen a chance to respond.

  
The day afterward, Lauren gives him a disapproving look as Jensen fills her in on what happened.

"Do I need to start preparing myself for the session where you admit that you're suffering from erectile dysfunction?" she asks dryly and Jensen practically chokes on his tongue. Everything's working perfectly downstairs thank-you-very-much, and he tells her that. Heck, his shower and right hand can  _testify_  to that.

"But not  _with_  Jared," Lauren points out and Jensen sighs. In the span of a day he appears to have gotten over the embarrassment of dissecting his relationship; it's one less emotion and stress factor for him to have to deal with.

"I wanted to, believe me, I really wanted to, I just had to get that off my chest," Jensen explains. Lauren writes something down in notepad in front of her and Jensen eyes it warily. He's convinced that she just does it so that she looks professional.

"Or you were stalling because you still have unresolved feelings for Jeff, like Jared seems to think."

“That’s not true,” Jensen practically shouts. “I just…I don’t know, I don’t want Jared to end up hating me, the way that Jeff does. So I guess that Jeff, to an extent, is always there in the background…and…I’m not going to be able to leave it alone until I figure out why he resents me.” Even as he’s talking, Jensen knows how messed up he sounds.

“So, you think that Jeff hates you?” Lauren says slowly. “Why’s that?”

“He’s practically admitted it!” Jensen replies. “Plus there’s the cheating, the sleeping with the guy I couldn’t keep my eyes off thing. He’s been nasty ever since.”

“And things were okay before that?”

“Well, yeah, after we split we decided to be friends. Before Jared came back on the scene, we were fine…as long as we didn’t talk about  _us_ , we got along.”

“And you seriously don’t know why he’s acting the way he is?” Lauren says with a shrewd look, before she leans back in her chair and scoffs. “ _Men._ ”

“Hey,” Jensen exclaims. “Aren’t you meant to be nice to me, given that you’re my therapist and all?”

Lauren laughs, “Me and you both know that if you were to be a registered patient here, I’d have to refer you to someone else. You can just pay me in wine later.”

“What about me and Jared?”

“About that…” she begins, and Jensen tenses up instinctively. This doesn’t sound like it’s going to be good. “While I’d love to help you two out, you’re still in the early days of the relationship, so I think you should just learn how to be with each other for a while. Start over and see if that helps. I told Jared this, and he agrees.”

She has a point, Jensen thinks, in fact that she probably shouldn’t have been talking to them officially anyway. It hadn’t even crossed his mind before. Starting over and learning how to be with each other.

It sounds far too easy.

Scratch that, it sounds pretty damn fucking hard.

Danneel is sitting by his door when he arrives home, with her red hair tied back in a loose ponytail. Jensen knows that Jared's inside, and briefly, he wonders if she’s attempted to knock. She smiles weakly as he approaches, but Jensen doesn't smile back. He still remembers her brash words at their lunch, and he's not quite ready to forgive her yet. With that in mind, he bypasses her and enters his apartment, ignoring her abortive ”Jensen!” He closes his door; he leans on it, shuts his eyes briefly and takes a deep breath. He remains like that for at least a minute before opening his eyes to see Jared watching him from the couch.

There's an odd look on Jared's face, an expression that Jensen can't quite place. "You should hear her out," Jared says after a while. "She's your friend." Jensen wants to huff at that but there's something in Jared's tone that makes him stop. Jared looks wrecked: there are dark rings under his eyes, his skin is pallid, and he definitely doesn't look happy.

"What's wrong?" Jensen asks quietly, his voice unsure because this is uncharted territory for him. With Jeff, he never had to ask if he was okay; Jeff was just Jeff. He’d always been unbreakable, untouchable and seemingly devoid of emotion. If Jensen was being honest with himself, he’d contemplate why he was stupid enough to stay with someone he’d never be happy with. With someone that didn’t seem to need him. Jared is different. He's fragile and young, and the fact that Jensen feels like a screw up does not make anything easier.

 

"I don't want you to lose your friends because of me," Jared says sadly. He looks so dejected that Jensen rushes to him, he sits next to Jared, and he clasps one of his hands. Jensen doesn't do this, he doesn't hold his partner’s hands (because usually they don’t need him to) and he’s bad at comforting people. He’s got his own justifications for that, notions that have roots buried deep inside his head. Jeff and all the guys before that helped him remember those, helped him to keep that part of himself hidden.

For some reason, Jared makes him ignore all of that. Jensen's ready to do anything -  _anything_  - in order to wipe the look of despondency off Jared's face.

"I haven't lost anyone because of  _you_ ," Jensen says. "These people are or were my co-workers, not my BFF's or whatever you want to call them."

"What about Danneel?" Jared says as his hazel eyes flash with fury.

Jensen doesn't know who the anger is aimed at, him or Danneel.

"She said some hurtful things. I'm not going to run back to her, not until she apologizes – not until I’m ready to her what she has to say." Jared looks like he wants to argue, but he turns away and Jensen takes the opportunity to tell Danneel to go away. He's hit by a gust of wind as he opens the door, but she's still there with an expectant look on her face. Jensen frowns, "You need to leave."

"Jensen, please," she pleads. "God, you were never this upset when I said shit about Jeff." The moment the words leave her mouth, a sheepish expression forms on her face, and Jensen can see the apology in her eyes. With a sigh, he realises that he doesn’t have the energy to stay angry, can’t deal with too many conflicted emotions at once. The human mind isn’t built for that, that much of it he understands.

“Maybe you should consider why that is,” he says softly, before stepping out and just stopping short of closing the door fully. “I’ll meet you tomorrow, usual place – unless you’re working?”

Danneel raises an eyebrow, “That jerk Rosenbaum still has me and Kristen on unpaid leave. Kristen’s looking for another job, but I like this one. I just wish that I hadn’t been so stupid.”

Jensen smiles at her sadly, but he doesn’t offer her any words of comfort. He doesn’t really know what to say, so he chooses silence. After a few minutes she nods her goodbye and says, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

When he gets back inside, Jared’s on the phone with a strained look on his face,

“You’re being ridiculous, I told you that none of this was necessary,” is what he’s saying – whispering even, and Jensen gets the feeling that he’s not supposed to be hearing a word of this. Before Jensen can move, Jared looks up and spots him and he cuts the person off. “—whatever, I don’t care. Just—look, I’m coming over now and you can tell me everything.” He clicks off the phone and stands up, shrugs his jacket on and throws Jensen an apologetic look.

“I’ve got to go,” Jared says. “Chad’s having…uh, he’s having girl trouble, I should probably go check on him.” Jensen’s just about to answer when he remembers that Chad’s been on some conference trip for a while. It’s been one less worry for him quite frankly, because he gets the feeling that Chad’s always going to be an overbearing presence during his relationship with Jared

“I thought he was on a trip,” Jensen says when Jared frowns at him. “That’s what you told me.”

“And now he’s back,” Jared says shortly. Despite his tone, he approaches Jensen, and leans down to kiss him chastely. “I’ll see you later. Love you.” And before Jensen can even blink, Jared’s out of the door and slams with a loud thud.

Jensen’s too busy focusing on the  _love you_ , to dwell on Jared’s weird, abrupt behaviour.

  
The matter of Tom and the spiked drink rears its ugly head again the next day, as Jensen is dining with Danneel. They’re at their usual low-key sandwich bar when a familiar, dark-haired figure sits down at the table across from theirs. Jensen thinks nothing of it, until a blonde-haired woman pulls out a chair at the same table, and he recognises her. Her name’s Allison Mack, she’s a reporter who has covered a couple stories at the hospital. She’s also Tom Welling’s ex-girlfriend. Danneel turns her head to see what Jensen’s scrutinizing, and, when she turns back, her eyes are comically wide. Idly, he wonders if she knows about the bar incident, but he realises that it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. He wants to go over there and knock Tom’s fucking ass off his chair, but he’s got an operation later. He learned his lesson when he punched Chad; his hand had hurt like a bitch for days.

Jensen can also hear Jared’s voice in his head telling him to leave it. What’s done is done, he’d say, and the thought just makes Jensen bristle with anger. He wishes that Jared would just fight for himself; hell, he wishes that he could fight for Jared right now, because the police and their open line of enquiry doesn’t mean shit.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re staring daggers at Tom Welling,” Danneel asks eventually. “Not because of him and…Jeff?”

“Thanks for telling me about that, by the way,” Jensen says, with a raised eyebrow. She gives him a long look, like she’s trying to drill through his skull, and he waits.

“They weren’t exactly discreet about it. If anything it was almost as if Jeff wanted you to know, what with all the flirting and jokes – as you stood right there.”

“I didn’t notice any of that,” Jensen said. “But that’s what Jeff said; he wished that I’d known. Do you think it means something that I didn’t notice?”

“Look, I’m not expert, and I certainly am not Team Jeff, but…the only time I ever seemed to hear about you and him was when you’d caught him cheating, and you agreed to make another go of things,” Danneel says. “It was almost as if you’d only remember that you were in a relationship with him when he pulled that shit.”

It hits Jensen then, the reason behind Jeff’s animosity. He’s  _jealous_. Not only that, Danneel’s right – Jensen had been distant, Jeff had admitted as much. Looking back on it…each time he’d caught Jeff with some else, it’d been at a place where Jeff knew Jensen would be or at least would show up. That can’t have been a series of coincidences. Like Jeff had said, that’d bring out Jensen’s jealous side and they’d make up. Jensen would tell himself that he’d keep a closer eye on Jeff, make sure that they didn’t let things fizzle out. Yet, every time they’d would fall back into old habits.

Perhaps Jeff wasn’t as devoid of emotion as Jensen had thought he had been. Maybe Jensen hadn’t been as in love with Jeff as he thought he’d been either.

In fact, Jensen wasn’t sure if he’d loved Jeff at all.

“I always thought that he was the reason why he didn’t work,” Jensen says. “But I guess I’m just as much the reason as he is. Look, can we just not talk about Jeff? He’s part of my past, and, right now, all that matters is Jared.”

“He’s the cute resident, right?” Danneel says with a grin. “I’m not sure if you remember, but we were at some party and you kept going on about how it was a travesty that this guy had been given a face that you wanted to lick. That was right around the time that Jared started here the first time. You were referring to him.”

_If Jensen digs a little deeper into his head, delves further into his memories, he remembers. Jared's not just some kid he had a crush on. He'd acted on it. Once. It started with a rowdy relative yelling obscenity after obscenity at the staff. The sour smell of alcohol poured off him in waves, and, as usual, fucking security was nowhere to be seen. Jensen had stepped forward and calmly informed the man that he was in a hospital not in a bar. And he got a fist in his face in response. He tripped and fell backwards, but before he landed, a strong pair of hands gripped him tightly before he could fall. Jensen wanted to thank the person but he was too busy trying to right his vision. As well as the dizziness, there was a throbbing pain where he’d been hit. He touched the tender area and blinked when his fingers came away red._

_"Come on, let's get you cleaned up," a deep, warm voice said, and Jensen wanted to laugh at the irony of it. He let the person guide him into a small side room. When he got there he finally got a good look at the person who'd come to his rescue. He was tall, with dark, long, brown hair and hazel eyes. Jensen recognised him as one of the new student doctors, but for whatever reason he couldn't recall his name._

_"I'm Jared Padalecki," the guy said, as if he'd read the unasked question on Jensen's face. Jensen had nodded as Jared pulled on some latex gloves and arranged the swabs and iodine in front of him. Jensen knew of Jared (son of the infamously Dr Padalecki, according to the most avid gossipers on the ward), but he’d never had the pleasure of meeting him until now._

  
_"This might sting a little," Jared informed him as he dabbed at Jensen's eye, and despite the warning Jensen still hissed. Jared leaned back to look at him and, as their eyes met, an unfamiliar feeling rose in Jensen's chest. For a brief moment the two of them were still and the room was so quiet that he could hear Jared’s breathing. There was a slight hitch in the rhythm, before Jared carried on tending his wound and put some dressing on it. When he was done, Jared smiled at Jensen unsurely and pulled out something from his pocket._

_“I was saving this for myself but…seeing as how you’ve been a model patient and all…” Jared’s voice had trailed off as he held out a goddamn lollipop. Jensen laughed at that, and slowly rose so that Jared wasn’t looming over him. As he stood he stumbled slightly, and crashed into Jared’s hard chest when the man reached out to steady him. Jensen felt that unfamiliar flutter again as they looked at each other, and, before he knew what he was doing, he leaned forwards to capture Jared’s mouth in a kiss. Jared tasted like sugar mixed with the bitter aftertaste of coffee but all that Jensen focused on was that..._

_Jared was kissing him back._

_Seconds later he came to his senses. He was in a relationship for God’s sake. He pulled away abruptly, and placed a hand on Jared’s chest to hold him back._

_“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have—thanks for helping me out.” Jensen fumbled with the words, but stopped when he took in Jared’s confused expression. “I’ll…I’ll see you around,” he finished. Then Jensen fled._

When Jensen’s snaps out of it, he wonders why he worried about that kiss for so long, especially when, Jeff had done more with others and had unfaithful as often as he possibly could.

“I don’t remember that,” Jensen says, but his face flushes regardless. “And your attempts to distract me are not working, Harris.”

“Okay, what’s the deal? Maybe I can help you exact revenge on Tom,  _without you actually_ exacting revenge on Tom.”

“I’m still mad at you.”

“Please, the second you came back out of your front door, I knew that you’d forgive me,” Danneel says cheerily. “I think I like this Jared kid already. Anyway, what did Tom do?”

“He spiked Jared’s drink when we were on a date,” Jensen replies, watching as Danneel’s eyes light up on the word  _date_  and then widen as the rest of his words sink in. He’s surprised to see her face become angry seconds later.

“Why?” she demands to know as she glares over in Tom’s direction. “Jared’s so…nice. I can’t even remember why people used to rag on him before he left.”

“You remember that?”

“Kristen was an instigator, so…yeah,” Danneel says with a shrug. “I was no angel either, but her and Tom were particularly vile.” Jensen wonders if Kristen was in on Jeff and Tom’s little black market shop. Probably.

“He knew about Tom and the drugs, and Tom apparently thought that Jared ratted him out, because his partner in crime, Jeff, is so loyal and noble.”

“Seriously?” Danneel says. “If Jared was going to tell, wouldn’t he have told his dad back when he first caught wind of this?”

“I don’t know,” Jensen says. “And I don’t care. Just—can we get out of here, before I do something I regret?” Danneel sighs wearily, but she stands as he does, and for the first few seconds of their exit she’s right beside him. Suddenly, she’s not there. Jensen hears the scrape of chair legs and turns around just in time to hear the loud  _thwack_  as the force of Danneel’s fist sends Tom flying backwards into a crumpled heap on the floor.

“You better watch your drink, hon,” she says to Allison, who is looking at the scene with an aghast expression. “I hear that Tommy here likes to add a little special something when people’s backs are turned.” She turns and strides towards a shell-shocked Jensen before either of them can respond, and there’s a hard, steely look in her eyes.

Jensen cracks a small smile as he walks out behind her.

It’s late in the evening before Jensen realises that Jared isn’t coming over. Even though they’re not actually sleeping together in a sexual sense, he’s kind of gotten used to Jared staying over, be it on the couch or in Jensen’s bed. Jensen’s not usually the snuggling type; he doesn’t do that. With Jeff it was always about sex and actually getting some sleep, but never about just  _being_ together. It saddens Jensen to think that they’d pretended for so long, and had ended up hurting each other, Jared and God knows who else.

He shakes himself out it; he’s thought about his past relationship enough and, like Lauren says, he should be focusing on Jared, who he hasn’t actually heard from today. Guilt floods him as he snatches up his cell phone – he’s always been bad at the whole calling/texting first thing. He should really work on that. Jensen shoves down his self-condemnation and hits the call button, waiting expectantly for the dialling tone to ring. It goes straight to voicemail, causing Jensen to frown. He tries again, to no avail, and shrugs to himself as he starts making his way to bed. Maybe Jared’s asleep or something.

He does his best to push down the wave of doubt that sweeps through him.

  


Jensen's return to work isn't as anticlimactic as he hoped. He goes through his rounds in the morning, with no more fuss than usual, but by eleven he finds himself being hauled into Rosenbaum's office.  
  
"Look, we're rushed off our feet today," Rosenbaum says before Jensen can even accept the offered seat. "We're a doctor down, and I have two residents that I can't move to another ward. McCoy and Padalecki." Working alongside Jared doesn’t sound like a good idea.  
  
“I’m sure they’ll be fine for one day,” Jensen says.  
  
“With all due respect, I’d rather that they weren’t left unsupervised.”  
  
"In that case, I'm willing to help out," he says quickly. "It's part of my job, isn't it?" He attempts to smile serenely, but Rosenbaum doesn't return it, and just mutters something that Jensen can't quite catch.  
  
"Right well, they'll be on the ward, all you have to do is provide assistance should they need it," Rosenbaum says. "It might distract you from the board’s queries about why one of their most _promising_  doctors pulled out of such a unique operation." Jensen freezes  _queries about what now_? Rosenbaum turns away and begins to write something, and Jensen takes it as his cue to leave.  
  
Rosenbaum's always been an asshole anyway.

  
He doesn’t actually get called on by Sandy or Jared, so his day is mostly uneventful. It has to rearrange his valve replacement surgery when another patient demands an additional consultation, and after that he goes back to diagnosing the referrals. Sometimes he wishes that he’d picked something a little less chaotic than a surgical ward, but, at the end of the day, it’s not like being a doctor is supposed to be easy. With that thought in mind he finds himself approaching Jared, who is staring at some scans with his brows furrowed. Part of him thinks that he should stay back, but Jared’s been avoiding him all the day. That, coupled with his hasty departure the other night, is what propels him forward. Katie, the nurse on duty, gives him an all too interested look but Jensen ignores her. She’s always been a nosy gossip anyway.  
  
“So what’s the verdict?” he says, wincing when Jared is visibly startled. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”  
  
“Uh, the ECG showed that his heart rate is lower than it should be, and he had laboured, short breaths when he was admitted, so that was to be expected. I just got the scans back and I can’t figure out where the problem is. I mean, I get that it’s probably a block, but I can’t see it.” Jared’s eyes don’t meet his and Jensen starts to wonder if he’s missed something.  
  
“Keep looking,” Jensen says quickly, when the silence starts to drag on for a touch too long. “Don’t make guesses, be sure of what you’re looking at and make sure that you’ve considered every possibility.” Jared makes a huffing sound and Jensen rolls his eyes fondly, he’ll never get over how impatient doctors can sometimes be. Even though he’s sure that he was the same when he was learning.  
  
“The femoral artery,” Jared says, his voice cutting into Jensen’s thoughts. “There’s a blockage, right there.” He points at the area on the scan and Jensen nods in agreement.  
  
“And how would you treat it?” he asks, as Jared puts the scans down.  
  
“By giving the patient an anti-coagulant to prevent any potential clotting, so Warfarin or another alternative, and prior to that, basic pain relief like aspirin should be administered to try and manage the pain. If the problem still persists, we’d go for angioplasty with stenting, which I’ve been practicing in the wet lab.” Jared actually smiles at that, as if he’s proud of himself and Jensen grins back.  
  
“And how’s that working out for you?”  
  
“Not great,” Jared answers with a laugh. Jensen marvels at the sight, before he’s interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat. He turns, but the person’s already out of sight, and by the time he turns back, Jared’s moving away.  
  
“Jared, wait!” Jensen calls out. “Can I talk to you in private for a sec?”

  


  
The second the door closes behind them, an uneasy look graces Jared’s face. Jensen does his best not to panic right there and then. Luckily, not panicking is part of his everyday life.  
  
“I missed you yesterday,” he says softly. Jared turns to look at him, his mouth twitching a little, as if he hasn’t decided how to react to Jensen’s words. He smiles in the end, it’s a lot less bright than his usual dimpled grin, but Jensen’s willing to take it.  
  
“Yeah?” Jared says, in an unsure and unusually quiet voice.  
  
“Yes,” Jensen says with a small laugh. “I was worried. I tried calling but your phone was switched off.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jared says. “I was helping Chad out, and the battery died.”  
  
As if on cue, Jensen’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and, judging by the similar noise coming from Jared, so does his. Jensen wishes that it could just be a coincidence, but it isn’t, and his heart drops as he sees that there’s been another email. Jared seems to be couple of steps ahead of him, because he is completely turned away, head bowed down while he processes the words on the screen. There’s a thick, tense silence before Jared murmurs, “Oh god.” He leaves without uttering so much as a goodbye.  
  
Jensen looks down the email, heart sinking immediately. It’s about Chris. He rushes to door and opens it only to find Jeff standing there.

  
Jeff’s timing can’t really get any worse than this, but he practically begs Jensen to hear him out. Jensen isn’t really sure what it is that Jeff has left to say to him.  
  
“Look, I’m leaving town for a couple of weeks, possibly for good.” Jeff speaks slowly. “I just wanted to let you know that I’ve informed the hospital about what happened with Angela, and I told them that I was the only one who knew about it.”  
  
“Oh.” Jensen’s momentarily stuck for words but he cannot help blurting out, “Why? Why not tell that that I knew all along? It’s not like there’s any love lost between us.”  
  
“Isn’t there?” Jeff smiles sadly, and Jensen’s hit by emotions that he didn’t even know that he  _had_. “We were friends up until Jared came back into the picture; we were making it work somehow. And maybe even after I lost my job, I could have explained things and we could have been okay. I was angry, annoyed that you would—look, I shouldn’t have been so harsh and you…”  
  
“I shouldn’t have gotten together with Jared?” Jensen snorts and he tries to push past Jeff. They don’t need to have the same conversation over and over. He’s tired of this.  
  
“That’s not what I was going to say—I just came to say goodbye, that’s all,” Jeff says. “That ass Rosenbaum made sure that I can only be in the building for an hour. It took me ages to get a visitors pass.” He looks at Jensen expectantly, as if he’s waiting for some sort of validation or sympathy. He won’t get it today; not when Jensen has other things to worry about.  
  
“Goodbye, Jeff,” Jensen says, before he finally makes it past him and out of the door.  
  
He’s has to find Chris.

  
The email is possibly the worst one yet, and Jensen doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to say to Chris. He doesn’t understand why this person is doing this. He doesn’t get any of it, except that Jared’s return was the start of everything. One by one, all of the people on this ward, who’ve been here since the first time Jared started, have been dispatched: Jeff, Tom, Danneel, Kristen, the threat to Jensen, and now Chris and Katie.  
  
There’s no text in the email, just some sort of scanned document. One that clearly states that Katherine Cassidy had been on file at an abortion clinic in December of last year, around the time that she and Chris had broken up. As far as Jensen knows, Chris had no knowledge of this.  
  
Surprisingly, Katie’s still on the ward when Jensen leaves the side room he’d been in. There’s a distraught look on her face as she stares at the computer screen. Jensen instinctively rushes over to her, and lets her fall into his arms as sobs begin to wrack her body. A couple of the other nurses give them curious looks but Jensen levels his best glare at them. Before he can talk to Katie, the alarm starts to sound, alerting them to the fact that a patient is crashing. Jensen, as the leader of the ward, has no choice but to release Katie so he can go and assist. Even through the tears stream down her face, she smiles at him in understanding and waves her hand in a shooing motion.  
  
By the time they’ve stabilised the patient, she’s nowhere to be seen.

  


  
Despite Jensen’s main priority being finding out Chris’ location, duty calls, and he rushes into the OR to assist with an emergency operation. Somehow, watching someone’s insides being cut up and stitched back together is a much more pleasant experience than facing his best friend and trying to somehow repair the damage that’s been caused. He also has to find Jared and get some answers from him.  
  
Jensen isn’t really looking forward to either of those conversations.  
  
He’s lost in thought in the small, shared wash area where the surgeons dispose of their gloves and dirty scrubs and give their hands a thorough cleaning, when he bumps into someone. The person turns, and it turns out to be Chad.  
  
“Ackles,” Chad grunts and Jensen nods at him.  
  
“When you’d get back from your conference?” he asks as he squeezes the soap onto his hands and rubs them together. Jensen doesn’t mean anything by the question; he’s just making conversation, because, for Jared’s sake, he and Chad might want to work on getting along.  
  
“This morning,” Chad says. “And, of course, they put me down on the rota to work today. Fucking bureaucracy, man. It’ll be the death of us.”  
  
“Oh, but Jared said that he went over to help you out with something a couple of days ago,” Jensen replies. “I figured that you were back in town.”  
  
“No, no,” Chad says, laughing nervously as he moves to dry his hands. “I had some files on my computer that I needed to him to email over urgently. That was it.”  
  
“He said that it was girl trouble.”  
  
“I also needed his help with that too,” Chad says quickly, moving to dry his hands before Jensen can say any more.  
  
Chad Michael Murray is a  _terrible_  liar. However, Jensen it slide for now. He’s sure that there’s a perfectly logical explanation for why Jared lied about where he was going. Once he locates Chris and sorts that whole mess out, he’ll go about finding out what it is.

  


  
Jensen finds Jared with Chris. It turns out that Chris was doing an extra shift down in the ER, and somehow Jared knew that and gotten there before Jensen did. According to Chris, Jared has come down a couple of times already. Jared doesn’t say much when Jensen looks at him, he just makes his excuses and leaves.  
  
“Seems like you’ve got good one for once, Jensen,” Chris says. “Don’t screw it up like you usually do.” Jensen doesn’t have the heart to tell Chris that he’s not sure if Jared can be trusted anymore, not when he can see his best friend’s red rimmed eyes and pallid skin. Plus, hadn’t Chris initially warned Jensen away from Jared?  
  
Jensen doesn’t think that he’s ever been  _this_  confused.  
  
“Are you going to be okay?” Jensen asks, and winces as the words tumble out. Of course Chris isn’t going to be okay, not for awhile at least. Chris, to his credit, almost manages to pull off an unperturbed demeanour.  
  
“I’ll be right,” he answers, while shrugging slightly. “I just need to get the hell away from this place, that’s all. That’s what this person wanted all along isn’t it? All of us gone. Maybe we deserve it.”  
  
“You didn’t deserve to lose the right to become a father,” Jensen points out and Chris laughs mirthlessly. “And you don’t deserve to find out like that.”  
  
“Maybe I did.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t really know what to say to that; so he leans against the desk, and basks in the silence that falls.

  


  
Jensen’s always been the kind of person that agonises over something until he’s got it all figured out, the type of person that spends hours on a puzzle until every single piece is in place. Unfortunately, his latest puzzle is Jared. Jensen would worry about making sure his suspicions aren’t too obvious, but for that to happen, he’d actually have to be around Jared. Needless to say, there have been a lot of missed calls, some excuses, and radio silence since the email about Chris and Katie. Katie’s still around, but Chris is long gone. He packed his bag the day after the email was sent and got the hell out of dodge. The sad look in Katie’s eyes only makes Jensen feel more sympathetic towards her, as opposed to angry. However, she stays well clear of him and in the midst of everything, Rosenbaum seems to have hired some adept doctors, so Jensen no longer has to keep an eye on Jared and Sandy. It makes him feel a little lonely, and that in turn gives him a  _lot_  of time to think. There’s one thing that his mind keeps coming back to, one snippet of a memory lurking around his brain:  
  
 _Dude, come on. You can do all kinds of shit with computers; you can’t blame me for wondering._  
  
Chad.  
  
As far as Jensen knows, Chad is Jared’s best friend. But even Chad had suspected Jared initially. That must mean something; it’s not some anomaly that Jensen can just ignore. Not after the weird behaviour both Jared  _and_  Chad had displayed last week.With that in mind, Jensen decides that he’s going to get to the bottom of this, once and for all.

  


  
“This…this does not seem wise,” Lauren says when Jensen meets her for lunch. “Are you deliberately trying to screw this relationship up?”  
  
“I just want answers, I want to know why my co-workers suddenly got pushed out, one way or another,  _after_  Jared’s return,” Jensen says. “I—there’s no mistaking how I feel about him. That’s why I need to know. If I don’t find out, it’s going to drive me crazy, and then I’ll drive Jared crazy.”  
  
“You’re an idiot.”  
  
“You sure know how to kick a man when he’s down,” he says dryly. Jensen’s not sure what he expected, but it wasn’t a downright moody expression to be adorned on Lauren’s face.  
  
“After everything you’ve put him through, maybe you should ask yourself if you want to actively pursue whether or not your  _boyfriend_  has sent some poxy emails,” she says quietly, but the anger in her voice is loud enough. “If you don’t trust him, then please – let him go.”  
  
“I don’t want to,” Jensen says petulantly. “And if it was him, I’d…I’d…”  
  
“You need to be honest with yourself,” Lauren says gently. “You need to stop pushing your feelings down and just burying them until they manifest in other aspects of your life.”  
  
“Wh—“  
  
“Your parents, Jensen,” she cuts him off, with a hard, determined look in her eyes. “Your family. You need to deal with what happened, you need to deal with the Jeff situation, and honestly, you can’t sort all of that out and string Jared along at the same time.”  
  
“I’m not stringing him along!” Jensen protests. His chest still stings from the mention of his family, his parents. He doesn’t think about them, not anymore. It’s just easier that way. He doesn’t need to deal with them; he’s dealt with them. Hell, why else hasn’t he spoken to them in the last five years? They’re not happy with his lifestyle, in return, he doesn’t flaunt it in front of them, and doesn’t contact them. Jensen isn’t sure how else he’s meant to deal with his family abandoning him. In fact, he hates Lauren a little bit for bringing them up after all he’s done to bury it.  
  
“You are, and I think that you know it,” Lauren says as she glances down at her barely touched lunch. Jensen can’t blame her; his own plate reflects a similar state. Turns out that relationship talk is kind of an appetite killer. “Do you remember what you said about Jeff when you started dating him? You said, ‘It’s nothing serious, he’s not the kind of guy that I’d take home.’”  
  
“I say that about all of my boyfriends,” Jensen mumbles.  
  
“That’s my point, you moron,” Lauren says with a sigh. “You deliberately pick these guys that are no good for you, and then, when the time comes, you offload them. I thought Jeff was the exception, given the number of times you forgave him, but look at how that turned out.”  
  
“Gee, Oprah, where were you before I started dating Jared?” Jensen retorts sarcastically, and Lauren raises an eyebrow at him.  
  
“I can see that you’re not open to reason,” she stands, and gathers her purse. She looks like she wants to say something—her gaze is hard and unrelenting—but Jensen can see the moment that the fight leaves her eyes. It reminds him of Jared’s face just before he’d told Jensen where he’d been during his year off. The memory invokes a cold feeling in Jensen’s chest, and he starts to think that maybe Lauren has a point.  
  
“I’ll leave you to pay for lunch,” Lauren says before she strides away. She’s angry; Jensen can tell.  
  
But before he can mend that bridge, he has to think about how he’s going to break another.

  


  
Jensen’s broken up with a lot of guys before, which maybe kind of proves Lauren’s point. Usually he gives them the ‘I think we should take a break’ line and then never calls back, but there are some exceptions, like Jeff. That had been ‘This just isn’t working’ followed by him insisting repeatedly that there was nothing that Jeff could do change his mind. It had been the hardest break up by far, but at least he’d known how to go about it. He’d known in his heart that all they were doing was hurting each other and weighing the other down with promises that neither of them seemed to be able to keep. It had been the right thing to do.  
  
With Jared, he has no clue how to go about things. Perhaps it is a sign that they can work things out and that Jensen can get over his trust issues but…he doesn’t want to do that to Jared. He doesn’t want to dick him around any more than he has already. He spends a long time thinking about it.  
  
By the time he’s made up his mind, it’s late and he arrives home to smell a delicious aroma wafting from the kitchen.  
  
“Surprise!” Jared says cheerfully when Jensen slams his front door shut, and Jensen feels like the biggest asshole on the planet. Jared carries on talking, not waiting for Jensen to say anything. “I’m sorry that I’ve been AWOL lately. I’ve been flat out exhausted what with work and family drama. The fallout from my Dad’s annual dinner with my siblings was not pretty. I’ll tell you about it as we eat, and you can fill me in on what’s going on with you.”  
  
Jared smiles brightly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Or well, if it does then Jensen can’t tell, it’s possible that he’s got his melancholy tinted glasses on. The worst thing is that he wants to hear about Jared’s family drama, wants to curl up on the couch with him and talk about everything and nothing at all. But he can’t. Not anymore, not when his emotions and thoughts are so catastrophically displaced. Lauren was right, he can’t do this; he has to let Jared go. Not just from their messy, tangled relationship, but from the web that’s been spinning since their first kiss.  
  
And with those thoughts in mind, Jensen blurts out, “I think we should break up.”  
  
Jared’s initial response is to drop the china plate he’d been holding, and Jensen watches as it shatters to pieces. It reminds him of them. He’s about to shatter them into fragments, and break Jared’s heart.  
  
“Is this because I haven’t been around much lately?” Jared says as he steps forward, right onto the mess of china in front of him. He doesn’t notice though, and Jensen spares a thought for the fact that his mother bought him the set. He wishes that he’d thrown it away. “If it is then I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to end up bitching to you about everything and make you worry. But I shouldn’t have just dropped off the grid like that. I…just, give me another chance. Please.”  
  
Jensen’s heart sinks, and hits the bottom of the fucking ocean with a resounding thud.  
  
“It’s not that,” he answers. “It’s not you.”  
  
Jared scoffs, “I swear to God, if you say ‘It’s me’, I’ll fucking deck you.” He’s angry and Jensen looks up to see twin spots of red on Jared’s cheeks. It looks wrong on his face.  
  
“But it is me, I can’t lie about that,” Jensen says. “I don’t trust you, Jared.” Jared’s eyes widen in surprise and he steps back, shoes crunching on the broken china once again. He looks like he’s been sucker punched and Jensen fights the urge to just go comfort him.  
  
“It’s not your fault. It’s my issue, and it’s not fair on you. I don’t want to hurt you, or push you away later down the line, and that’s what would happen.”  
  
“It’s what’s happening now,” Jared says blankly and he turns and steps into the kitchen, momentarily disappearing from Jensen’s eye line. He emerges seconds later with a dustpan and brush, and a plastic bag in his hand. Jensen watches silently as he sweeps up the broken pieces and deposits them into the bag, ties it up and sets it down. He disappears again but reappears soon, his phone in his hands.  
  
“I don’t know what’s happening here, or what’s changed since the last time we spoke,” Jared says slowly. “But you’ve pulled this crap before, after that time in the elevator and so maybe you just need some time to work it out. I’m giving you two days, because any longer and I’ll lose my mind. Two days, and if by then you’re still certain you want to end this, I need you not to talk to me ever again. There’ll be no going back, no take-backs – nothing.”  
  
He takes the broken plate with him, along with the remains of their relationship. Luckily for Jensen, he has two 24 hours shifts in a row to keep him occupied.


	5. Chapter 5

Jared calls once and leaves a message, instead of deleting it, Jensen listens. Jared sounds amiable enough, but Jensen can hear the underlying hurt in his voice. Jared wants them to be friends. Jensen stops listening after that, the temptation to undo what he's done is too great. There is no ‘ _just friends’_  with Jared: never has been, never will be. When he eventually man’s up and checks his voicemail inbox again, he's surprised to find one from Lindberg, the security guard from. He says that he might have some useful information about video footage from the elevator. It makes Jensen snicker a little, because it is pretty much the focal point of Jensen's investigation, and that in itself doesn't really say much. He’s been investigating the emails for weeks now, and it’s proved to be fruitless so far. It turns out that pestering security guards doesn’t really get you anywhere.  
  
Even so, he finds himself making his way down to the security office, because apparently Lindberg likes his solitude too much to come up to Jensen’s office. Jensen doesn't really care enough to ask for an explanation.  
  
"What have you got for me?” Jensen says through the open doorway. Lindberg is visibly startled and he makes a half-hearted attempt to clear the discarded fast food wrappings and empty coffee cups before he notices Jensen's raised eyebrow, and stops sheepishly. After a few seconds, Jensen begins to glare at him impatiently.  
  
"Thought you and your kind were sticklers for hygiene?" Lindberg sniffs and eyes Jensen warily. “Right, you ain’t in the mood for some friendly chat. Look, I’m gonna be honest here – you can’t keep harassing the security staff. They don’t like it, and I’m tired of hearing about it, my  _boss_  is tired of hearing about it. Plus, they’re not exactly keen to help you out if you catch my drift.”  
  
“I don’t catch it, no.”  
  
“ _We_ got the emails too,” Lindberg says and Jensen nods slowly. Of course they did. “And well, no one wants anything to do with that especially when the powers that be are all over it.”  
  
“That’s news to me,” Jensen says curtly.  
  
“Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention,” Lindberg suggests, before he turns and writes something down a scrap of paper. He hands to Jensen. “Here, I’m quite the computer whiz; I might be able to help you out, just say the word.”  
  
“Why do you want to help me out? After all I’m just the jackass who worked on the ward with a bunch of scumbags, right?”  
  
Lindberg leans back in chair. “Well, you look like you’re slowly going insane, so I thought I’d offer my services. That and self-pity ain’t a good look on you.” Jensen wonders if Lindberg thinks he was born yesterday—probably not because he isn’t making a big show of hiding the fact that he doesn’t care much about Jensen.  
  
“You’ve got betting pool on who it is, don’t you?”  
  
“Well according to the first email, you and your friends weren’t averse to those either.”  
  
Jensen laughs despite himself.

  
Six weeks after the break-up, Lindberg still hasn’t come up with much despite the fact that the emails have been coming from an I.P. address in the nearby vicinity, Jensen’s accused Kristen publicly at a birthday gathering – and gets a drink thrown in his face for his trouble, and Chris manages to take the time to send a text letting Jensen knows that he’s okay. Jensen’s got dark rings under his eyes, and he looks a lot paler than usual but he doesn’t let that stop him from taking extra shifts here and there, because when he’s not working he’s  _thinking_. Crazy as it sounds, Jensen just doesn’t want to think anymore.  
  
He doesn’t want to think about how empty his life is without Jared, without Chris. He doesn’t want to think about his parents.  
  
He doesn’t want to think about how  _right_  Lauren is, and definitely doesn’t think about how he still has to make things right with her.  
  
He wishes that the emailer hadn’t given him a chance to avoid the consequences of his actions (or inaction); he wishes that he’d been fired along with the rest of them. Jensen’s not sure what would happen if he tried to quit, not sure what that  _person_ has stored up their sleeves, and he’s not sure that he wants to find out. So he just exists, like some sort of drone or robot. He gets up, main lines coffee, does his shifts and goes home, and then does the same thing the next day.  
  
Rinse, wash and repeat.  
  
In the end Jensen’s gets his kick up the ass from  _Chad_  of all people. He shows up at Jensen’s office one day, barges in, helps himself to a seat, and then stares.  
  
“Can I help you?” Jensen asks, when he relaxes a little.  
  
“You look like crap,” Chad says bluntly. “Everyone can see that you look like crap, and everyone is worried, and Jared just happens to be one of those people. He’s worried, which means that _I’m_  worried.”  
  
“That’s great,” Jensen retorts. “I’m fine, so you don’t need to worry. Neither of you needs to worry.”  
  
“Okay fine, whatever you want to tell yourself,” Chad relents easily. “I just wanted to say that breaking up with Jared was the right thing to do.” Jensen’s pen slips out of his hand, ink spraying all across the form he’s filling in. He gets that Chad never liked him, but it’s still a bitter pill to swallow, he feels a twinge of sadness for Jared. Jensen knows that he’s been an asshole, knows that he owes Jared a better explanation. He knows that, deep down inside, breaking up with Jared certainly didn’t  _feel_  like the right thing to do, not in his heart.  
  
“You were never going to work out.” Chad carries on talking when Jensen doesn’t respond. He’s too busy trying to maintain his resolve and not punch Chad— _again_. “I did warn Jared beforehand, but he didn’t listen to me, and, unfortunately for the both of you, you just couldn’t resist the lure of a young, attractive male who your ex had toyed with first.”  
  
That makes Jensen’s head snap up so fast that he swears he hears an audible click. He looks up to see Chad’s face twisted into a cruel snarl and he bites back his angry words.  
  
“You’re not here to ask how I am, are you?” Jensen says. “This is just your way of ripping me a new one? Well there’s no need, I’m an asshole and I don’t deserve Jared. I get it. You can go now.”  
  
“God, you’re such a fucking self-centred prick,” Chad spits out, nostrils flaring as he stares angrily at Jensen. “I’m not here to help you wallow in your self-pity, or to pat you on the back. When you and Jared got together, everyone was talking about how you wouldn’t last, how you were just going through the motions, how you were confused and trying to make sense of Jeff’s actions. I was one of those people, but Jared was adamant that you weren’t like that; said that he was sure that you weren’t like that. Obviously, he was the only person who thought your fucking relationship would actually work.”  
  
“I’m not like that,” Jensen insists, before he notices the tense and corrects himself. “I wasn’t like that, at first I thought it might be, but…I liked Jared before the thing with Jeff ever happened—I wanted it to work. Just—I couldn’t trust him in the end, so I ended it.”  
  
Chad scoffs, “What did he do that was so untrustworthy?”  
  
“He lied about you,” Jensen says without missing a beat. “He told me that he was going to meet you, after I overheard him arguing with someone on the phone. And then two days after that you got back into town and covered for him when I asked.” Chad opens his mouth to deny it, but Jensen’s glares at him pointedly.  
  
“Okay,” he says slowly. “You’re right, I lied. That can’t have been all that it was?”  
  
“He was acting weird, avoiding me and just being  _weird_ , and then before I could an answer out of him, boom – Chris and Katie’s lives were fucking gossip fodder for the rest of us and Chris was gone, Katie was gone and…everyone who was working on the ward when Jared was first here is  _gone_  – that can’t be a coincidence.”  
  
“Maybe. Maybe not.”  
  
“Look, you said it yourself, he’s good with computers – he’s got the means and the know how to pull something like this off, but…”  
  
“He wouldn’t deliberately set out to hurt others?” Chad finishes off Jensen’s abandoned sentence. “Is that what’s putting the brakes on that  _ridiculous_ notion?” There’s a sudden silence as Chad glares at him, his gaze fiery and intense. Jensen feels like a brick wall has been rammed into his chest, because Chad is right. Jensen knows how angry Jared’s been, knows how betrayed he felt all those years ago, but he really isn’t the type of guy who’d waste time manipulating people’s lives, regardless of whether they deserve it.  
  
He’s spared from having to respond when Chad’s pager goes off, the startling beep sounding out in the room in the middle of their silent standoff. After a few seconds, Chad stands, moves towards the door, stops as he reaches the doorway, and says,  
  
“Sometimes, people have to keep things secret in order to protect others. Surely even you can understand that?”

  


  
It’s a month later when Jensen stops off at a bar a few blocks away from his apartment. It’s the first of his two nights off and he needs a drink or two. He’s out of beer at home, so he decides to grab a quick drink, just something that will relieve some tension. And he’s well on the way to doing that when he catches sight of a familiar figure sitting in a booth near the back. He reaches into his side bag and retrieves his glasses, and puts them on. Winter’s been making its way into spring slowly, meaning that the pollen in the atmosphere has been irritating Jensen’s eyes, so he’s forgone the contact lenses for a few days. None of that really matters though, because glasses or no glasses, there’s no mistaking the fact that Jared’s in bar. Judging by the tiny shot glasses in front of him, he’s drinking again.  
  
Jared doesn’t look too drunk, and Jensen watches as Jared picks up another shot and throws his head back, baring his long tan neck for the whole damn bar to see. It provokes a flare of possessive heat inside Jensen, and he turns and downs the rest of his beer, and tries to calm himself down. He doesn’t get to look at Jared that way anymore, not after everything. No, what he needs to do is get Jared home.

  
“I’m not drunk,” Jared insists even as he’s following Jensen into his apartment. “Plus it’s not like my dad minds. I’m better now. I just needed something strong to get through today.” Jared was reluctant, back at the bar, eyes hard and blank as he told Jensen to fuck off. He relented eventually and followed Jensen out, and made the ten minute walk to the apartment, and didn’t say a word whenever Jensen tried to start a conversation.  
  
And here they were.  
  
“Right, I’m sure he’ll accept that excuse when he smells the alcohol and cigarette smoke on your jacket,” Jensen says as he saunters past Jared into the kitchen to get a glass of water. When he gets back Jared’s still standing by the door and Jensen practically has to coax him over to the couch.  
  
“Anything’s better than me not talking to him  _at all_ , trust me,” Jared says dryly as he accepts the glass of water. He gulps it down quickly, sets the glass down on the table and then turns, as if he’s about to leave.  
  
“Wait,” Jensen says, even as he kicks himself mentally for not letting Jared go.  
  
The irony of is not lost on him.  
  
“You can stay for a bit, just so you can sober up.”  
  
“I’m not  _drunk_ ,” Jared says tightly. “But if I have to stay here a second longer, that’s probably not going to be a case.” Jensen should let it go at this point, just  _let Jared go_  but he can’t help himself from asking,  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“I need to get  _you_  outta my head, and I have tried  _everything_  I can think of: extra shifts, hanging out with the guys, hanging out with my brother, my  _dad_ , anything but it never goes away,” Jared says, words tumbling quickly out of his mouth, almost as if he can’t control them, and can’t keep them in any longer. The anguish in Jared’s voice makes Jensen’s chest ache, he steps forward, and flinches when Jared steps back, creating more distance between them. “My therapist said I should talk to you. Ha, like that was ever easy, like there’s any chance that you would listen. No, I’d rather try and keep whatever dignity I have left.”  
  
“Jared…” Jensen’s soft, low voice trails off quietly, because as always, he doesn’t know the right thing to say. He never fucking has the right words, and just keeps screwing things up, breaking them both a little more.  
  
“No…” Jared takes a visible deep breath. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t show up and make a fool of myself. Hell, I promised Chad. Thank you for stopping me before I got too drunk and for the water. I’m going to go – for real this time.”  
  
 _Really_ , Jensen should let him go, but he doesn’t.  
  
“You can’t just  _leave_ , Jared, not when you have shit that you need to say to me,” Jensen says and Jared stops in his tracks. “So finish what you were saying, I’m ready to listen.”  
  
Jared snorts as he turns to face Jensen, but the look on his face is anything but pleasant as he snarls, “Maybe, I’m not ready to talk.”  
  
“Maybe you’re not,” Jensen says hesitantly.  
  
“And maybe  _you’re_  not as ready to listen as you think you are,” Jared says, his shoulders slumping visibly, as if energy is draining out of him. “I think the one thing I’ve learned from all this is that you’re just too set in your ways. You don’t understand that trust is something you build up; it doesn’t just come overnight.”  
  
“Right,” Jensen replies sarcastically. “Right. Tell me one thing, before we broke up – did you trust  _me_?”  
  
“I was learning to, like Lauren said we should, I was  _trying_!” Jared retorts. “You went behind my back and read my medical file! So, can you blame me?” Instead of the  _no_ brimming on his tongue, Jensen lets his anger override any sense of reason.  
  
“What about that evening when you said you were going to Chad’s?” Jensen asks. I found out that he wasn’t even in town on that day.”  
  
“What the hell does that have to do with trust?” Jared’s practically, stepping forward until he’s so close that Jensen can feel the tension simmering between them, waiting for its chance to sizzle and explode.  
  
“I can’t trust someone who has the gall to  _lie_  to my face in such a sloppy manner!”  
  
“Oh and you’re a fucking saint, right? You’ve never told a lie before!”  
  
“That is  _not_ what I said,” Jensen spits out. “This is ridiculous!”  
  
“What’s ridiculous is the fact that I ever came back here!” Jared’s words echo into Jensen’s suddenly still apartment, silence stagnating beneath their heaving chests. He’s not sure who moves first, but one minute they’re standing across from each other, with angry glares on their faces and the next, they’re kissing so hard that Jensen’s not sure if he’s still  _breathing_.  
  
It’s messy, rough, teeth clacking as they grapple with each other and Jared pulls back seconds later and Jensen (hopeless fool that he is) attempts to chase after the kiss but Jared stops him with a hand to his chest, warmth of his palm bleeding through as Jensen tries to push down the wave of attraction rolling around and crashing inside of him.  
  
This time, Jared initiates the kiss. It’s slower, deeper and still not enough. Jensen wraps his arms around Jared and kisses him harder, stumbling backwards as Jared starts to walk forward. He’s not sure how much distance they cover like that, as they bite at each other’s mouths and stifle moans against the other’s lips. As they slam into some wall, he presumes that they’ve reached the hallway. Before he can get too lost in the thought, Jared pulls away and starts to mouth at Jensen’s neck, licking and biting as Jensen tilts his head back and moans softly. He can feel Jared’s erection digging into his thigh from where one of Jared’s long legs are shoved in-between his.  
  
“Are we doing this?” he manages to grit out, and Jared moves so that his lips are moving against Jensen’s when he murmurs, “Fuck  _yes_.” After Jared’s confirmation, they don’t waste any time in getting into Jensen’s bedroom, and situating themselves on the bed. By the time Jared’s looming over him, he’s lost his shirt and Jensen’s treated to the sight of miles of mouth-watering tan skin.  
  
He can’t help wondering why it was that they never got around to this, and then he promptly shoves the answer and ensuing thoughts down and focuses on matching Jared, kiss for kiss, touch for touch. When Jared slides into him, Jensen feels like he’s about to explode, and his heart somersaults in his chest as Jared starts to fuck into him.  
  
Jensen closes his eyes and loses himself in the sensation.

  


  
Afterwards, once Jensen’s disposed of the condom, they lie there in the darkness in silence. Jensen can hear Jared’s breathing but he doesn’t think that he’s asleep. As clichéd as it sounds, Jensen’s never had sex like that before. It’s never  _meant_ that much before, not even with Jeff.  
  
“Chad is going to  _kill_  me,” Jared says with a soft laugh, and Jensen bristles at the mention of Chad. Chad’s more likely to kill  _Jensen_ , at this point. He says as much to Jared, who hums wistfully in return.  
  
“He’s just looking out for me,” he replies. “They all were when they said that this wouldn’t work.” He doesn’t expand of who ‘they’ are, and Jensen doesn’t ask. It’s the story of Jensen’s life really: he never  _asks_. When he found out that Jeff had been cheating, he never asked why. Aaron, his boyfriend before Jeff, practically raided his bank account despite the fact that he had some sort of trust fund and didn’t need the cash, but Jensen never asked why. Sometimes people’s reasons aren’t worth knowing, not when it just leads to hurt and misery.  
  
Like the time he asked his parents why him being gay meant that he was a sinner, that he wasn’t worthy of their attention anymore. He’d been in his second year of college, and tired of harbouring his secret. So he’d gone out to dinner with them and he’d told them. Jensen hadn’t expected instant support and reaffirmations of love. He knew what his parents were like, set if their ways, old fashioned. But they loved him, he knew that much.  
  
The look of disgust on their faces still surprised him.  _You can’t be gay,_  his father had said, while his mother looked on in shock.  
  
 _Why_   _not?_  
  
 _Because it’s wrong, honey_ , his mother had said, the endearment fake and forced, just like the strained smile on her face.  _It’s unnatural_ , was his fathers preferred words and Jensen hadn’t asked again.  
  
He hadn’t spoken to them again. They didn’t call him either; they made no contact once he’d mailed back the all of church leaflets they’d sent him. Over the years, it became easier to forget about them, push them aside and tell himself that he was better off without them, until his college boyfriend introduced Jensen to his parents at their graduation and the impact of the loss finally took his toll on Jensen. He dumped said boyfriend, and vowed never to be in a position where he’d have to meet the parents ever again.  
  
And he hadn’t. Not until Jared at least. He’d never even felt any pain or jealousy that Jared’s dad was in the picture, fully aware of his son’s orientation, and seemingly okay with it. It hadn’t bothered him.  
  
It  _doesn’t_  bother him.  
  
“Please say something; the silence is driving me nuts.” Jared’s voice jolts Jensen out of his thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”  
  
“My parents.” Jensen’s voice is abrupt, hoarse from the raw emotion, as well as from the sex. With anyone else, it’d be a terrible first time, but with Jared…it’s just par for the fucking course. Messy, complicated and harder than it ought to be.  
  
“You never talked about them when we…” Jared trails off, shifting slightly so that he’s facing Jensen who’s been lying on his side the whole time. “What about them?”  
  
“You don’t want to know.”  
  
“You don’t know what I want,” Jared snaps, but there’s something in his voice. A tremble that resonates in Jensen’s mind, causing a memory to spring up, and damn if today isn’t a walk down memory lane. Jensen really hates his subconscious sometimes.  
  
 _“Why did you come back then?”_  
  
 _“I told you this!” Jared says. “My dad works for the hospital and it’s where I did the first two years, it doesn’t make sense for me to go anywhere else!”_  
  
 _“Oh right, like your dad’s not rich enough to get you a place at another hospital in the state.”_  
  
 _“Fuck you, Jensen. Just…I can’t take this from **you**.”_  
  
He thinks about the kiss, thinks about the way that Jared blew up at him that night and the fact that it really didn’t make sense for Jared to come back to this hospital. Jensen thinks about what Chad said to him a couple of days earlier:  _He was the only person who thought your fucking relationship would actually work._  
  
“You came back here for me,” he breathes, watching as Jared’s eyes widen and take on a vulnerable expression. “Not because of your dad or a vendetta, just because you wanted to be with _me_.”  
  
Jared doesn’t deny it.  
  
~  
  
Jared leaves soon after Jensen’s epiphany. He gathers up his shoes and clothes, and presses them towards his chest as he stalks out of Jensen’s bedroom. Jensen’s right behind him, with sheet wrapped around his waist, as he asks if they can talk about this. Jared just shakes his head and tugs his jeans on, and then his shirt. Jensen watches silently, and bites his lip hard when he sees Jared brushing away some stray tears.  
  
He wonders when he’s going to stop screwing things up.

  


  
Jensen calls Lauren, and, oddly enough, she answers. They haven’t spoken for a while, yet she agrees to meet him anyway. For some strange reason, Lauren’s always more than willing to listen to Jensen talk endlessly about Jared. He's not sure why that is until he catches her smirking at him.  
  
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asks eventually and she shrugs. "You're the one that told me to break up with him." There must be something chagrined in his voice because the smile drops right off her face, and she gives him a long, hard look.  
  
"You didn't break up with him because I told you to, right? Because that would be a whole new level of stupidity, even for you."  
  
"No!" He starts off defensively, but sobers up quickly. "You were right; we couldn't go on if I didn't trust him." Lauren sips at her drink quietly; they're having lunch at some pretentious cafe that she likes. Jensen indulges her simply because she's been doing the same for him for a long time.  
  
"Are the two of you together again?" Lauren asks suddenly. "I haven't seen Jared for a couple of weeks." Jensen did not know that she had been seeing Jared after their break up, and he says as much to her.  
  
"This isn't high school, Jensen," she says pointedly, "and you didn't  _win_  me after the break up. Plus, I assumed that he'd need all the friends he has after losing the love of his life."  
  
She claps a hand over her mouth while Jensen gapes at her.  _The love of his life_? After the revelation last week, Jensen probably shouldn't be surprised, but he is.  
  
"Please keep that to yourself," Lauren says hurriedly. "Also, I take it that you're not back together." She sounds disappointed, which confuses the fuck out of Jensen, so he says nothing and practically jumps on the waitress when she comes to take their order. Lauren doesn't bring Jared up again.  
  


  
Lindberg is a pretty useless detective.  
  
That's the conclusion Jensen comes to when they convene again. The only information he has is that the emails were sent from an IP address located in this town, which is possibly what he said last time. Luckily for him, Lindberg addresses Jensen's perplexity before he can voice it.  
  
"Listen man, I need a huge favour," Lindberg feigns some sort of pained expression and looks up at Jensen. "I need a hundred bucks or so, maybe two, just for an emergency. I'm onto something with these emails, I swear. I just need to sort this problem out."  
  
Jensen gives Lindberg a fifty and tells him to fuck off and leave him alone from now on.  
  
After that, he’s back to square one. It takes him all of two days to give up and attempt to put it behind him.

  


  
Jensen and Jared don’t talk about what happened. It’s constantly on Jensen’s mind because he sees Jared regularly, and he catches himself tracing Jared’s footsteps more than once. Yet he can’t seem to find the courage he needs to put things right. The arrival of another email makes Jensen think that he might not ever get a chance.  
  
At first he deletes the email without reading it, but then he removes it from his trash because none of these fucking email clients let you delete anything instantly. It’s a short one, possibly the shortest yet, but it still knocks Jensen for six.  
  


## 

It takes Jensen a good minute to realise that his pager is going off in the distance.  
  
A patient is crashing. She’s one of the younger ones on the ward, in her early thirties, brought in after passing out while on a run. Jared’s right there, assisting the crash team, but he stands back when Jensen reaches the bay. Jensen’s tongue feels like lead in his mouth and he can’t speak, can’t think past the fact that Jared’s leaving. Luckily for him the crash team know what they’re doing. They try to stabilise her for a good ten minutes. When that doesn’t work Jared starts with the compressions. He’s using the right technique, and doing the right thing. Yet they all know that she’s gone. Jared keeps going and Jensen stands there for a moment, watching silently.  
  
“Jared,” he says eventually, placing his hand on Jared’s arm, “she’s gone.” Jared swallows audibly, stops, and pulls away from Jensen. He walks away before Jensen can find the right words to console him.

  


  
Jensen calls Jared into his office later, minutes after their shift ends. Jared follows him reluctantly, and Jensen kind of hates how miserable he looks. It’s not the first patient that they’ve lost, and it won’t be the last. Facing death never gets any easier; Jensen has probably become a little desensitised a little, but all it takes is one patient he connects with. It’s not a nice feeling—never will be.  
  
“You did a good job today,” he says and Jared scoffs. Jensen’s given this pep talk a lot of times, to residents or nurses. Usually the words flow off his tongue, clear, concise and confident. It’s different with Jared though. He feels wrong-footed and unsure of himself. “Don’t beat yourself up over what happened. We tried our best to save her.”  
  
“Did we?!” Jared spits out. “What if there’s something that we missed, something that we didn’t see, that  _I_  didn’t see?”  
  
“I doubt that there was anything, but you and I both know that it happens.”  
  
“It happens—it  _happens?_ ” Jared’s about to go on, but the fight seems to leave him after a few seconds. “It happens. Got it.”  
  
They sit there across and apart from each other, both looking elsewhere, both pretending that they don’t have anything else to say to each other.  
  
“So, you’re leaving,” Jensen says. Jared leans back in his chair, and finally looks up to meet Jensen’s gaze.  
  
“Guess so,” he replies with a shrug. “I was going to tell you at the end of the week, but I guess our mysterious friend couldn’t contain themselves for that long.” Jensen doesn’t know how to reply to that. He wants to ask why, why now? But the question seems hollow and intrusive: he doesn’t have any right to ask. Not anymore.  
  
“I’ll miss you,” he says instead. “You’re an amazing doctor. They’ll be lucky to have you.” Jared starts to respond, but then hesitates, tapping his fingers on the edge of Jensen’s desk nervously.  
  
“I got a call from Jeff after he left,” Jared says, after Jensen gives him a questioning look. “He said that he was willing to come forward and tell the police what Tom did to me.” It is good news, but from what Jensen can see, Jared is  _almost unhappy_.  
  
“That’s good, right?” Jensen says. He wishes that Jeff had come forward sooner, but they can’t change the past.  
  
“I was trying to put all of that mess behind me,” Jared replies tersely. “And I don’t want to be another notch post on Jeff’s path to clear his fucking conscience, not after everything he’s done.”  
  
“So…what are you going to do?” Jensen asks  
  
“I’ll figure it out,” Jared replies as he stands, and pushes his chair in. “Just thought that you should know that Jeff called.”  
  
Jared leaves the office, and it’s the last time Jensen sees him at the hospital.

  


  
With order finally restored at the hospital, Jensen turns his attention back to the emails. The departed doctors have been replaced with newer ones that Jensen only knows by name, and for the sake of his sanity, he decides to keep it that way. He does his rounds, performs his surgeries, and ignores Jim Beaver's emails about a medical conference on the West Coast that he thinks Jensen ought to attend. It's almost as though he's fallen right back into obsessive mode, but this time it’s an amped up, supercharged version. He prints all the emails out, highlights them, annotates them, and does numerous internet searches, until the words are practically imprinted on his brain. Danneel calls, Lauren calls, Chris texts, and Jared texts once, reminding him of how much of an asshole he is for not getting in touch with him first, but all messages go unanswered.  
  
Everything inevitably implodes on him one afternoon, midway through yet another valve replacement. He's unfocused, tired and not paying attention, and he ends up nicking an artery. Now, he's nicked many in his time and he knows how to regroup afterwards, how to stop the resulting bleed. Yet, this time is different. He freezes, unaware of the assisting surgeon asking him if he should take over, but very aware of the bright lights glaring above him, causing beads of sweat to form on his face. Jensen doesn't move until he's literally shoved out of his daze, pushed aside by one of the nurses, who looks like she'd rather be somewhere else. Machines are beeping, the anaesthetist looks worried, the patient’s probably in VF, Jensen realises. He bolts out of the OR; unable to stick around to see what happens. He ends up in his office fifteen minutes later, tears in his eyes as his exhaustion takes its toll on him. When Jensen gets an email from Rosenbaum telling him to take the rest of the day off, he sighs in relief, goes home and slides under his comforter without getting undressed.  
  
  


The next day, Chris shows up on his doorstep with a six-pack of Coors Light in one hand and a Jason Statham movie in the other. Jensen lets him in without any questions. They don't talk much. Chris mentions something about being in a band, but not why he's waited until now to show up. When Jensen asks about Katie, Chris avoids the question, but Jensen can see something light up in his eyes. He probes further, and Chris admits that they're working things out, slowly. Jensen's happy, he really is, but at the same time he's pissed—angry that Chris is moving past the incident, while he's stationary, stuck trying to find answers that no one wants to give.  
  
~  
  
Jensen calls Jared after Chris leaves. It's not a conscious decision. He’s feeling warm and loose from the beer so he just picks up the phone and dials. It rings, rings for what seems like the longest time, before Jared finally picks up. The sound of his voice nearly sends Jensen over the edge but he tries to steel himself, calm himself down.  
  
"Did you call me for something specific?" Jensen doesn’t realize that  _he_  hasn't said anything until Jared speaks again. Jared sounds uncomfortable, as if he would rather walk on a bed of nails than talk to Jensen. And really, who can blame him?  
  
"Are you busy?" Jensen asks. "Because I can call back." It's a lie, they both know it. Jensen doesn't give into impulses often. It'll take a lot more than  _I said I'd call you back_  to get him to pick up the phone and call  _again_.  
  
"I'm on call, but it isn't too busy here," Jared says easily. "I have time." Only then does Jensen think about what he wanted to say. Most are things that he needs to say face to face.  
  
“By the way, we finally have a date for Tom’s hearing,” Jared adds, before Jensen can say anything else. The blank cadence of his voice implies that he doesn’t really want to talk about it.  
  
"That’s good,” Jensen replies. “How's everything else going?"  
  
"Great," Jared says. "You?" For some reason that basic courteous question breaks the proverbial dam, and Jensen finds himself telling Jensen about the disastrous surgery, and what he'd been distracted by, how lonely the ward feels, how he feels like he's going insane. Jensen wishes that Jared could be right here with him. Jared shouldn't be the one he says this too, Jared shouldn't have to listen to his bullshit, but he does. And Jensen loves him for it. It hits him then, the way he misses Jared with an intensity that almost hurts. He so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost misses what Jared says next.  
  
"…I thought you'd given up on this wild goose chase?" Jared says in disbelief. "It's not healthy, man. But I know that you won't let this go, some I'm going to tell you something." He pauses. And then says, "Maybe you were right not to trust me." Jensen can't find his voice.  
  
"The last email, the one about me leaving,” Jared continues. “I'd only told three people, and there's no way that anyone else overhead, short of bugging my phone.”  
  
"Who are they?" Jensen asks.  
  
"My dad, my brother and Chad," Jared says and sighs. Jensen frowns, as a thought occurs to him.  
  
"And Rosenbaum, right?" Jared doesn't answer right away.  
  
"Yeah, he knew too, but it's his job to know everything isn't it?"  
  
It hits Jensen then: Rosenbaum is the director of the hospital; he's the one who makes bad press vanish; he cleans up all the mess, and is an expert in damage control. Jensen puts the call on speaker and brings up one of the emails on his phone. It doesn't take him long to spot something, it's been niggling away at him, lurking in the shadows of his mind. There is a capitalized ‘M’ and ‘R’ at the beginning and end of ‘medical meddler’. He'd dismissed it as a dramatic flair but it was too much of a coincidence to dismiss it possibly referring to one Michael Rosenbaum.  
  
That son of a bitch.  
  
"You don't think its Rosenbaum do you?" Jared asks in a tone that suggests he already knows the answer. Jensen gets the feeling that Jared’s wondered or possibly  _known_  for a while, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s a question for another time. "Why would he deliberately try and tarnish the hospital's reputation?"  
  
That right there is the interesting part because there he hasn’t heard anything about going-ons outside of the hospital: not a single word. Jeff is gone. Tom is out on bail and not likely to kick up a fuss. Danneel is looking for jobs elsewhere, he hasn’t heard anything about Kristen in months. And Chris and Katie seem to have moved on. It could have been one way to get rid of staff that could possibly cause trouble down the line. Despite most of the staff at the hospital being on the mailing list, it had always been unlikely that they would speak out. Reporters have an uncanny knack for not caring once someone has already given them a tip.  
  
"But  _why_?" Jared asks when Jensen explains his theory. "He was really helpful when I went to him, why would he air my dirty laundry out there for everyone to see?"  
  
"I'll ask him tomorrow when I confront him," Jensen says firmly, because he's not just going to sit on this, he has to know for sure. He has to hear it from the horse’s mouth.  
  
"I don't think that's a good idea," Jared says. "Chad still bitches about the time when you punched him. I had to stop him from coming back later to punch you back."  
  
"You should have let him do it," Jensen says in reply. "I deserve it, for treating you the way that I did."  
  
"Look, promise me that you won't say anything to Rosenbaum until I get there." Jensen mentally calculates the distance from where Jared's working and living and he frowns.  
  
"I can't make you drive four hours just to stop me from punching the guy,” he says. Jared sighs heavily, and Jensen tries to reassure him. "Don’t worry, I can control myself, he’ll be fine."  
  
"It's not him that I'm worried about," Jared mutters. It's entirely inappropriate, but the words send a tingle down Jensen's spine. He knows that Jared still cares about him, but hearing it is another thing. It gives him hope that Jared might still be in reach when he sorts himself out.  
  
"You know what? I have a better idea," Jensen says. "We should catch him in the act."

  


 

  
The next day, Jensen’s woken up by his phone alerting him that he has a new email, at five-fucking-thirty in the morning. His mood goes from mildly annoyed to  _pissed off_  when he sees who it’s from. He rolls his eyes, gets out of bed, deciding that he probably won’t get any more sleep anyway. He and Jared hadn’t come up with any sort of plan yet, not that Jared seemed interested. Jensen could sense that Jared was uncomfortable with the situation, and that he wanted to put it behind him. But surely Jared would want to know for certain.  
  
When Jensen asked, Jared said, “Well, why do you want to know so much? Everyone seems to have just accepted what happened, but you keep on digging?”  
  
“I can’t just accept this,” Jensen replied. “Look at what they’ve done to you, to Chris and—“  
  
“You, right?” Jared interrupted his tone bitter. “They disrupted your perfect bubble and you’re not okay with that.”  
  
Jensen insisted that it started off with him having his best friends’ interests at heart, not that Jared wasn’t right.  
  
“You hate not being in control,” Jared added and, well, Jensen couldn’t argue with that.

  


  
The meeting doesn’t go the way Jensen expected it to. For one thing, there’s a woman sitting in one of the chairs when Jensen arrives at the office. She has dark skin, is dressed in a smart, white blouse, with black rimmed glasses hanging from a chain on her neck, and she’s smiling at him.  
  
 _Psych_ , he thinks, smiling back at her when Rosenbaum directs him to sit down. Besides the woman’s presence, it’s no different to being in Rosenbaum’s office. The man has the same passive expression he always has, like he’s unmoved by everything. Perhaps he is.  
  
“Some of your colleagues have expressed concerns about your well-being,” Rosenbaum says, “And I learned that you seem to be struggling to deal with the email issue, as well as the changes that your ward has undergone.”  
  
“So, you want me to attend mandatory psychiatric sessions or you’ll be left with no option but to put me on leave.” Jensen’s not sure if he can stomach being in the same room as Rosenbaum, not when he’s talking about the emails as if they’re nothing, as if he’s not the one sending them.  
  
And seeing as how Jensen can’t be certain that it  _is_  him, the best thing would be for him to leave.  
  
“It’s just routine questions and conversation,” the woman says, before she extends a hand, “and I’m Clarice Jackson, by the way.”  
  
He shakes her hand, and nods at her. He trusts that she already knows who he is.  
  
“When can I book an appointment?”  
  
She doesn’t seem to be impressed with him, but, luckily for Jensen, she signs him off after three sessions of Jensen cheerily talking about how okay he is. But not before asking her fair share of invasive questions.  
  
“Before you made the error in surgery, had you made any other mistakes like that?”  
  
“No, I hadn’t,” Jensen answers, deciding to throw her a bone or two, so he can be done with all of this once and for all.  
  
“Why do you think it happened then?” Clarice asks. “It was quite some time after the first emails had been sent, and a while since the last one had come. Was it related to Jared Padalecki leaving the hospital?”  
  
“Yes, maybe—I don’t know,” Jensen can’t push down his irritation. “It felt different when he left, which makes no sense because the ward was basically a ghost town before that, everyone but me was gone.”  
  
“So, you felt lonely,” she says. “And you needed something to fill the void left by Jared? The two of you were in a relationship, yes?” Jensen nods. “Were you together before he left?”  
  
And that’s how it goes; she wheedles more and more information out of him, until finally she sits back and says that she’s signing off on the sessions.  
  
The last thing she says to him is, “ _I hope that you and Jared work things out_.”


	6. Chapter 6

Jensen keeps a close eye on Rosenbaum over the next few weeks. The man is a looming presence on his ward, and, from what Jensen’s heard, on all of the wards. He doesn’t act any different than he did before the emails, even though Jensen’s sure that he breathes a lot easier. Jensen wonders sometimes if Rosenbaum did the right thing in getting rid of his staff. Judging by what Chris and Jeff had told him, there wasn’t much loyalty amongst them, and they were all too happy to rat each other out. Maybe Rosenbaum had just been getting rid a ticking time bomb that would eventually have exploded.  
  
He wonders if it matters.

  
“You’ve changed your tune,” Chris says, later on at Danneel’s birthday party. It’s a small low-key affair. They’re at a restaurant having dinner. There are eleven guests in total, but the seat next to Jensen is empty. “From what I’ve heard, those stupid emails are all that matters to you these days.”  
  
“I admit that I went a little crazy over it,” Jensen says. “But I’ve been talking to Clarice, one of the hospital psychiatrists and she’s been great.”  
  
“You know, the best way to get over this whole thing, would be to just…leave,” Chris replies. “I thought you’d have high-tailed it back to Texas by now.” The mention of his home state makes Jensen tense a little but he stops to consider what Chris has said.  
  
“I can’t just  _leave_ ,” he says. “I have long-term patients, career goals and aspirations and…”  
  
“And?” Chris prompts. When Jensen doesn’t answer, Chris adds, “A lot of bad shit has happened there, Jensen. How on earth are you going to move on when the building itself is a constant reminder?” The waiters stop by to distribute the menus and Jensen downs his glass of wine. Chris is right. Jensen knows that he is. Yet the idea of not working, of not having a constant distraction from his own thoughts, scares the crap out of him.  
  
Of course, Jared picks that moment to walk into the restaurant. Jensen doesn’t see at him at first, but a loud burst of laughter has him looking up. That sound’s been embedded in his brain for a long time now. He knows it’s Jared before he even sees him. And, naturally, Danneel’s reserved the spot next to Jensen for Jared. She winks in his direction as he realises what’s transpired.  
  
He and Jared don’t verbally greet each other. Jared nods in his general vicinity and Jensen nods back. He blushes when Chris raises an eyebrow at him. It’s the first time he and Jared have seen each other since that disastrous meeting in Jensen’s office, when he tried to console Jared. Chatter rings down the other end of the table, but their end noticeably quieter.  
  
“I have a question for both of you,” Chris says eventually. Jensen looks up at him so fast that he feels a twinge in his neck. There’s a mischievous gleam in his eyes, and Jensen gives him a stern look. Chris proceeds to ignore it. “What exactly possessed you to make out in an  _elevator_?”

  
Jensen is glad that Chris is there to break the ice because the tension breaks after he asks them about the elevator incident. Jared tells them about his new hospital, and how he’s spent most of his time locating one 61-year-old patient who keeps on finding new hiding places so he can smoke e-cigs. Chris tells them about his band, and Jensen just listens. When Chris tells him that it’s his turn to bring something to the table, he can’t think of anything. His life’s been a rollercoaster of emotions over the last year, and all he’s done is work, work, work, in an environment that he’s probably hated for a while. He doesn’t have any funny or interesting stories to tell them.  
  
Jared seems to see some of that in his face, because he turns to Chris and asks, “What’s the story behind that hideous Egyptian rug in his apartment? I spilt water on it once, and he chewed me out for like, an  _entire_ day.”  
  
Chris pulls a face. “God, that thing is  _ugly_.”  
  
“This coming from the most tasteless guy I know,” Jensen says dryly when the both look at him. “I don’t expect either of you to know class when you see it.”  
  
“Dude, come on,” Chris says. “Tell Jared the  _real_  story about why you keep that thing.”  
  
By the time he’s finished, the rests of the guests are looking at them in amusement, while he, Chris, and Jared laugh until they have tears in their eyes. For a moment, Jensen wonders if they’re being disruptive, but Danneel shoots him a thumbs-up sign from her end of the table and he grins.  
  
Jensen’s still smiling later on when Jared leaves early and promises to call. Chris gives him a knowing look when Jared’s gone, but Jensen pretends not to notice.  
  
Danneel tells him, later on, that Jared’s been asking about him, and that he drove up especially for the dinner when she told him that Jensen had been going through a rough time. He wants to be mad at her, and tell her that it’s none of her business, but the only thought in his mind is that, even after everything, Jared’s still cares.  
  
While Jensen knows that he doesn’t deserve Jared, he also knows that letting Jared go is shaping up to be the biggest mistake of his life.

  
A week after the dinner, Jensen finds himself sitting idly in his office, while he waits for his lunch break to pass. He tends to hate days like this, when things seem to be quiet and chaos-free, because, usually, things tend to get crazy five minutes away from the end of his shift. Jensen reschedules some of his appointments, and goes back to the ward.  
  
Later when gets back, his desk phone is blinking, and the red light tells him that he has a message.  
  
Jensen’s not expecting it to be from his mother. He listens to it three times, and deletes it.

  


  
For some reason he finds himself talking to Jared about the call. Since the party, they’ve been trading texts, calls, and voicemails, depending on what hours they work. It’s not a hundred percent awkward-free, but they’re getting there. That is why he picks up the phone and asks Jared to tell him what to do. He knows a little something about talking to parents after a long while. Well…sort of.  
  
“I can’t tell you what do,” Jared says after a long pause in the conversation. “I don’t really know what the situation is. You never told me.”  
  
“They— _she—_ didn’t approve of some of my  _life choices_.” Jensen’s not entertaining the idea of his father being willing to talk to him just because his mother is, at least not yet.  
  
“That must have been hard for you,” Jared says. “But it’s been a while, right? It’s up to you to decide if you’re ready to forgive her and put the past behind you.”  
  
“Forgive and forget, huh?” Jared makes an agreeable sound, and Jensen wants to ask,  _have you forgiven me?_

  


  
Jared drives up on a Saturday evening to see his Dad, but ends up at Jensen’s apartment after his Dad’s flight is delayed overnight. Jensen’s surprised to see Jared standing in the door, and his face reddens as he remembers what happened last time Jared was here. Jared doesn’t seem embarrassed or anything, so Jensen shrugs it off and lets him in.  
  
“The house feels really weird with no one there,” Jared explains once they sit down. His eyes stray towards a brown box that’s full to the brim. Jensen can’t help feeling a little ashamed. When Jared first left, he’d tried to get rid of all the stuff in his apartment that reminded him of Jared. He’d made it as far as the door before he’d decided that giving it to Chad to pass on would be the decent thing to do, but he never did. Sometimes he liked having the reminder, and needed to see the remnants of the relationship that he’d torn into two.  
  
“Sorry for just turning up without calling ahead or anything,” Jared says, after he looks away from the box. “It’s rude of me. I can go if you want; an empty house won’t kill me.” He’s obviously flustered, his cheeks tinged pink, in a way that makes Jensen want to  _touch_.  
  
“It’s fine,” Jensen says, to reassure him. “You’re welcome here anytime. In fact, the place hasn’t been the same without you.”  
  
“Alright, cool!” Jared’s response is a touch too enthusiastic, it sounds as if he’s forcing himself. Jensen can’t blame him, so he quickly suggests that they play Halo, and breathes a sigh of relief when Jared seems to relax.

  


  
It’s past midnight when Jared comments that he should stay at a hotel or just suck it up and sleep at the empty house. The ball of tension in Jensen’s chest seems to just  _snap_.  
  
“I don’t want you to go.” His heart thuds in his chest as Jared avoids his eyes. Jared looks resigned, disappointed almost, and Jensen wishes that he could just sit back and let Jared leave, do whatever he wants.  
  
“I can’t stay.” Jared stands and shrugs his jacket on. “I thought that we were on the same page for once, that we were  _friends_.”  
  
“We’re never going to be just  _friends_ ,” Jensen says, because it’s true. They can pretend all they want but the tension in his apartment has been palpable ever since Jensen got here. The way his heart skips a beat every time their fingers brush is nothing he’d ever feel for a friend. The way Jared consumes his thoughts screams anything but  _friend_.  
  
“Really?” Jared asks. “Give me one good reason why we can’t be?”  
  
“Because I  _love_  you,” Jensen says, ignoring the way his voice seems to have taken on a pleading tone. “And I know that might be hard to believe, but it’s true. I broke things off because I thought I was doing the right thing, and I still think that I did the right thing. Even so, there’s nothing to say that we can’t give this another chance.”  
  
“You can’t just…you can’t keep…” Jared trails off, runs a hand through his hair. “What if I don’t want to give this another chance?”  
  
“It won’t change the way I feel about you,” Jensen answers honestly. “But I’d accept your decision.”  
  
“I have to go.” Jared’s out of the door before Jensen can say any more. He slumps into the couch, eyes straying towards the paused game on his television screen. Jensen exhales roughly.  
  
Jared hadn’t said no.

  
Two weeks after his mom calls, Jensen gives in and calls back. They’ve barely made it past pleasantries when his pager goes off.  
  
Surprisingly, she makes him promise to call back. Despite the fact that it took all he had to make the first call, Jensen calls back that same day, as he lies on the bed in the on-call room. He’s exhausted and over-caffeinated, but oddly enough, hearing her soft, warm voice helps to calm him a little. She tells him about his dad, his siblings, the neighbours, stuff he’s missed out on.  
  
“Do you still feel the same way you felt back then?” he asks, when it all gets a little too much. When he feels as though he should still be angry.  
  
He can hear the tears in her voice when she answers, “No.”  
  
It’s not quite what Jensen needs to hear, but it’s a start.

  


  
“We didn’t do anything for your birthday this year,” Lauren says when she shows up on Jensen’s ward one afternoon. It’s June, and his birthday was three months ago. He isn’t sure why she’s here.  
  
“I decided to nip this avoiding-me thing in the bud,” she says, when Jensen just carries on looking at the patient file in front of him. “You can’t just shut me out because you’re afraid of what I’ll say about Jared.”  
  
“That’s not what—“ Jensen pauses, he’s not in the mood for an argument. “Okay,  _maybe_  you’re right. I’m sorry. Are we good now?”  
  
Truth be told, she hasn’t caught him on the best of days. One of his patients seems to have a different version of events from what is written in his notes each time Jensen sees him. Unfortunately for Jensen, he doesn’t have a photographic memory and he can’t just put a patient at risk, he needs the correct information. So each time this particular patient is admitted, Jensen has to chase down another set of patient notes and check that it matches what they have on record. It is equally tiring and fucking  _annoying_.  
  
“Someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning,” Lauren mutters. “Luckily for you, I have the day off. I’ll wait for you in your office.”  
  
Jensen sighs.

  
True to her word, Lauren is spinning around in his desk chair when Jensen pops into his office, three hours after he’d seen her on the ward. She’s on her cell as he steps in, and seems to be arguing with the other person. Judging by how quickly she ends the call when she sees him, it’s probably Jared.  
  
“You know you’re free to speak to him if you want,” he says. “It won’t hurt my feelings.”  
  
“You’ve been working all day, and you’re obviously tired and annoyed, so I’ll let that slide,” Lauren says. “It was a friend of mine, with some information about Tom. He got sentenced to two years in prison this afternoon. She says that it’ll probably be less if appeals, but hey, at least he’s been convicted right?”  
  
Jensen had completely forgotten about the hearing being today. God, he  _sucks._  
  
“Did Jared go to the hearing?” Jensen asks. “He hasn’t been answering my calls and texts.”  
  
“He hasn’t answering mine either,” Lauren says testily. If Jensen was a better friend, he’d probably try and sort things out with her now, but he’s more concerned about Jared and the radio silence. If he’d known that telling Jared he loved him would screw everything up, he never would have said anything.  
  
“Do you think he’s okay?” Jensen asks, and grabs his cell from his pocket and to fire off yet another text to Jared. He’s got to answer some time, right? “Maybe I should see if his Dad’s in town and ask. Or ask Chad maybe?”  
  
“Wait…” Lauren gives him a suspicious look. “What exactly did you say to him the last time you spoke?”  
  
“That I wanted us to get back together—again,” Jensen says. “He wasn’t really happy about it, but he didn’t say no! That’s gotta count for something, right?”  
  
Lauren’s look can only be described as pitying.  
  
“Have you ever wondered if the issue here is that you and Jared aren’t right for each other?”  
  
“Of course I have,” Jensen snaps. “Sorry, just, when we first got together, neither of us was ready. We didn’t test the waters; it was all about convincing the other that we could work. And I got scared when I couldn’t deal with my feelings, so with all that stress from the emails, I screwed things up.”  
  
“Jensen…”  
  
“He’s all that I think about, Lauren, and I don’t know what to do,” he continues. “My mom got in contact with me, wants me to come visit – I can’t even think about it. It’s just Jared, Jared, Jared, all the time. Maybe we’re not right for each other,  _maybe_ , but that doesn’t take anything away from how I feel about him.”  
  
Jensen isn’t sure what reaction he is expecting from Lauren, but her laughing definitely isn’t it.  
  
“I think that I might be able to help you with the Jared situation,” she says, when she’s done. “But you’re still an idiot.”  
  
Jensen can’t really argue with that.

 

  
Jensen decides to quit not long after Lauren agrees to help him win Jared back. Chris is right: there are too many memories here and what he needs more than anything is a fresh start. There is, however, still the matter of the emails to resolve. Despite Jensen telling Jared that he’d come up with a plan, his sessions with Clarice had made him see that it wasn’t really a good idea. “ _Why exacerbate the situation”_ , she asked, “ _when at the end of the day you’ll still be working here, unless you’re planning to leave?”_ At that point he’d been staying, but the more he thought about it, the more it made sense for him to leave.  
  
According to Lauren, that in itself was a miracle, so she saw no reason why he couldn’t close the chapter on the emails once and for all.  
  
“You look ridiculous,” Jensen says when Lauren sends him a picture of herself wearing a large cap, sunglasses and a black hooded sweater. “You’re supposed to blend in, not look like some… _deviant_.”  
  
“Whatever,” she says. “It’s not like he’s going to see me. I’m only here to take pictures.”  
  
Their plan to catch Rosenbaum is a fairly simple one. A couple of days ago, Jensen (posing as  _secret_doctor@gmail.com_ ) had emailed the ‘meddler’, claiming that he had information about Rosenbaum. The person had replied back, asking what it was and Jensen had told him that he’d leave it in package at the reception desk. That was where Lauren was waiting, while Jensen was on his way up to Rosenbaum’s office.  
  
There was nothing inside the box except a letter of resignation from Jensen. He’d deemed it appropriate given the circumstances.  
  
“Did Jared get back to you?” he asks, leaning back on the wall, nodding at another doctor who happens to be walking by.  
  
“Nope,” Lauren says. “But I’m sure that he’s listened to all of the detailed voicemails you’ve left him about what you’ve been doing since he walked out of your apartment.”  
  
Jensen scoffs,  _“_ They’re not  _that_  detailed. There’s a time limit after all.”  
  
“Shh, I see someone approaching the desk!” There’s some fumbling, and the sounds of Lauren swearing under her breath and Jensen waits. Oddly enough, he doesn’t feel anything. No excitement at maybe finding out if their suspicions are correct. After all the time he spent –  _wasted –_ trying to find out who it was, he wonders if there’s something wrong with him.  
  
“Well,” he says. “Who is it?”  
  
“You’re not going to believe it,” Lauren says in disbelief. “They showed up together, Chad Murray , Mr. Padalecki  _and_  Rosenbaum. I got pictures of Chad holding the package, but they definitely all arrived together with the intention of picking up this information.”  
  
Jensen freezes, and thinks, W _ell, I’ll be damned._

  
He’s still waiting by Rosenbaum’s office when the three of them arrive, voices down to a low hush as they talk amongst themselves. Chad’s got the letter in his hands as they approach the door and Jensen takes a deep breath.  
  
“Ah, Dr. Ackles,” Rosenbaum says. “It seems that we have some things to discuss. Please, come in.” Rosenbaum and Mr Padalecki disappear into the office, but Chad stops in front of him, holds up his letter of resignation.  
  
“Was all of this,” Chad waves it around, “Really necessary?” He looks annoyed, angry even and Jensen frowns at him.  
  
“I just wanted one last chance to find out who it was,” Jensen says, not really understanding what Chad has to be upset about.  
  
“You’re even dumber than I thought,” Chad mutters. He throws the letter at Jensen’s chest. “Good luck getting answers that you don’t already know.” Chad bypasses Rosenbaum’s office completely, and stalks down the hall leaving Jensen staring after him.  
  
With a shrug, he steps into Rosenbaum’s office.  
  
Mr Padalecki is standing near the door, bored expression on his face. Rosenbaum’s already on the phone but he gestures for Jensen to take a seat.  
  
“So, you’re sure about leaving?” Rosenbaum asks once he’s done.  
  
“Sure am,” Jensen says, smoothing out his letter and placing it on the desk. “I’m happy to serve out my notice, give you time to sort out a replacement.”  
  
“That won’t be necessary, Doctor,” Rosenbaum turns to his computer screen and begins to type quickly. “Please clear out your office by the end of the day, and return your keys to the reception desk. They’ll pass it on to the administration office. “  
  
“This is all a little abrupt isn’t it?” Jensen says. He had expected Rosenbaum to at least try and get him to stay. It isn’t that he lacks modesty; Jensen just knows that he’s good at his job, and usually hospitals don’t want their best assets to just  _leave_.  
  
“You’re the one resigning, Jensen,” Rosenbaum says. “And quite frankly, you’re making my life a whole lot easier. Your ward is in need of restructuring, and without any of the old guard there to object, it’ll be a lot easier for me to do that.”  
  
Jensen swallows. The emails, the loss of jobs—it’d been about  _business_?  
  
“You got rid of all of the competent doctors on the ward,” Jensen says slowly, “just so you can  _restructure_  without any objections?”  
  
“In a word, yes.” Rosenbaum is looking at him in an anticipatory manner, as if he thinks Jensen’s fuse is going to explode.  
  
“Are you admitting that you’re behind the emails?” Jensen asks. He turns to face Jared’s Dad, who seems to be watching them talk with a nonplussed look on his face. “Are  _you_ okay with this?”  
  
“Mr. Rosenbaum’s methods leave a lot to be desired,” Dr. Padalecki says. “But quite frankly, I’m not interested at all. I only asked him to see if he could find a reason to make Jeffrey Morgan’s position untenable.” Jensen can understand that, it’s a father looking out for his son. Making sure that Jared didn’t have to face Jeff everyday.  
  
“I might have been sending the emails, but  _I’m_  not medical meddler,” Rosenbaum says. “All of these people are.” He turns the monitor around so that Jensen can see the Gmail inbox. There are scores of emails, but Rosenbaum has highlighted the ones from Jeff, Tom, Kristen, Danneel, Chris, Katie and the rest of the people who’d been working on the ward.  
  
“Your colleagues were so ready to turn on each other,” Rosenbaum adds. “I personally can’t tolerate that on any of my wards, and I can’t condone the bad behaviour any longer. Who do you think dealt with all the complaints Dr. Morgan received? The complaints that they  _all_  received.”  
  
“Isn’t that your job?” Jensen asks, because he still doesn’t see the justification. But perhaps he’s just trying to kid himself.  
  
“My job is to make sure that things at this hospital run smoothly,” Rosenbaum says, voice calm and steady. “I’m not here to babysit any of you; I don’t care what your salary is or how talented you are. Enough is enough. I had to come up with a way to sort things out, and this was the most efficient way. I’m sorry that you got caught up in this, but I do feel it’s best that you cut your ties with the hospital and vice versa.”  
  
Jensen could sit here and argue, make Rosenbaum see that manipulating people is wrong, and that he’s equally as bad. Unfortunately, he gets the sense that Rosenbaum knows exactly what he is. He’s ruthless and spiteful, someone who can’t control his own workers, someone who doesn’t care.  
  
“Fuck you,” Jensen says, yanking off his ID badge. He throws it on the desk, turns on his heel and walks out.  
  
~  
  
It is twenty minutes later, when Mr. Padalecki taps on Jensen’s office door, and steps in. Jensen’s throwing things from his desk drawers into a plastic bag (because he doesn’t happen to have a box lying around anywhere).  
  
“What!” he barks, before he sees who it is. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.” Jensen still isn’t sure how to act around Jared’s dad, but he doesn’t particularly want to break the bridge, no matter how shaky it is.  
  
“It’s quite alright,” Mr. Padalecki says. “I just wanted to swing by to say that Michael Rosenbaum will get what he deserves. I asked him to get rid of Morgan, but not at the expense of my son’s dignity.”  
  
“Oh,” Jensen says. “I…okay.” He must look like an idiot, standing there, unable to form a sentence but Mr. Padalecki doesn’t even bat an eyelid. There’s something kind of intimidating about him.  
  
“Look,” Padalecki says when Jensen’s mouth finally snaps shut. “This could go two ways. Either I tell you to stay away from my son  _or else_ , or I give you some advice. I’m going to go with the latter because if Jared found out that I’d threatened you, he’d probably never speak to me again. So I’ll just say this, if you truly care for Jared, then tell him, and make sure that you know what you want.” He pauses, and adds, “In some ways, I blame myself for allowing him to come back.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Well, he seems to think that if I’d chased after his mother, we’d still be married and happy,” Padalecki says. “So he chased after you, because he thought everything would work out if you happened to be  _near_  each other. Unrequited love is one thing, Ackles, but it’s worse when you love someone who used to love you.”

  


  
The day after his belated birthday party, Jensen sets about looking for jobs. He’s tired, and has the hangover from hell, but this is what he’s supposed to do, right? Regroup, gain some control back. Figure out what his next move is. He imagines Jared shaking his head at him from his couch, laptop settled on his lap or cell phone in his hands. He’d say something along the lines of  _why don’t you just, see what happens_. The thought makes Jensen stop. He closes all the tabs in his browser, and stops.  
  
He’s going to just, see what happens.  
  
The problem with going with the flow, is that without the constant presence of work, Jensen is left with a lot of time to think. In the first two weeks after he quits he does all of the normal rites of passage, he goes out and gets shitfaced, lazes around in bed until three, watches a ridiculous amount of television, eats a lot of carbs and cuts down on his gym time. When he finds himself beginning to follow one of the major storylines on  _General Hospital,_ Jensen forces himself to snap out of his laxity. One, soap operas aren’t really this thing, and two, shows based in hospitals _definitely_ aren’t his thing.  
  
That’s how the  _Win Jared Back_  speech starts. He finds a yellow legal pad somewhere and starts to plan what he’s going to say, including cues because he’s nothing if not well-prepared. He’s tried not to think about Jared in the past few weeks, but it’s impossible. He finally feels free of Jeff, and the events that occurred after he was fired.  
  
Jensen finally feels as though he can be the person that Jared deserves to be with. He just has to find a way to convince Jared.  
  


  
Danneel laughs at his speech. Lauren’s reaction is more of a sympathetic frown. Chad tells Jensen that he’s sick of hearing about his and Jared’s never-ending love story, and that he should do whatever the fuck he wants.  
  
Oddly enough, Chris turns out to be the voice of reason. He takes one look at the speech and rips it up.  
  
“Dude,” he says. “ _Dude_.”  
  
“Don’t people grow out of saying dude when they’re like, 23,” Jensen says, because Chris isn’t really giving him anything to go on.  
  
“You’re a doctor,” Chris says. “You don’t need a speech, or any of this prepared shit. You guys are the masters of bullshit. If you want Jared to give your stupid ass another chance, then you’ll find a way.”  
  
“I tried before,” Jensen says. “But he didn’t want to know, not that I blame him.”  
  
“If there’s one thing that you’ve proved to everyone, it’s that you can be persistent when you want to be,” Chris says. “So, it’s up to you to not give up. Don’t give him a chance to say no.”  
  
“I don’t want to put pressure on him. I want him to be sure,” Jensen replies.  
  
“Dude,” Chris says,  _again_. “I’m not your fucking counsellor.”  
  
“I don’t even have his address or anything.”  
  
“Now that I can help you with,” Chris says. “I have friend who works at the hospital he transferred to, he’s hung out at Jared’s place a couple of times. I could ask him.”  
  
“When you say  _hung out_ …?”  
  
“I mean  _hung out_ , as  _friends_ , jeez.” Chris can’t help smirking. “Anyway, my friend is super religious, doesn’t drink at all, a bit like your boy. He says that he and Jared are kindred spirits.”  
  
“There’s a joke in there somewhere,” Jensen says, laughing when Chris shakes his head with fond amusement.

  


  
Three months after he quits his job, Jensen finds himself gearing up to make the trip from Lincoln to Portland. He’s never been to Portland, so he decides to make a trip of it and do some touristy things while he drums up courage to seek Jared out and attempt to rekindle their relationship. Jensen’s not sure what Jared’s answer will be; communication between them has been sparse ever since he begged Jared not to leave. He didn’t hear back about the emails, and Jensen understands why. It must be difficult to put something behind you when someone keeps bringing it up.  
  
Jensen decides to turn his unemployment into a sabbatical of sorts. He hasn’t lost his passion for medicine; his research is still on-going, and he considers maybe joining a research team in the future. For now he’s going to focus on himself, and his relationships, with Jared, with his parents and with all of the people that he hasn’t had much time for.  
  
He receives a postcard from Jeff, and promptly tosses it in the trash. He’s not ready to forgive him yet. Maybe one day, but Jensen can’t afford to dwell on that right now.  
  
~  
  
Jared’s door is red. It’s red and it’s terrifying. His heart feels like it’s in his throat and chest all at once, as if it’s ready to burst out and leave him. He spends a long time staring at the door, even though he’s tired from the drive.  
  
Jensen doesn’t look back once he’s out of the car; he focuses on walking forwards and trying not to lose his nerve.  
  
When he reaches the door, he knocks, and waits.


	7. Epilogue

 

For Jared, the path to Jensen all started with the kiss.  
  
 _It’s a little ridiculous because he doesn’t do crushes, doesn’t do love. His parents’ marriage fraying into pieces has always been his justification for that. Or, perhaps it’s always been an excuse. Sometimes he wants. Wants to find someone to love, wants a relationship, wants the two point five kids and white fence. But that’s only sometimes; he’s perfectly content with the way he lives his life, until of course, he starts his residency._  
  
 _The ward he’s thrown onto is a different from the ones he’s been on before. His co-workers all seem to be overly invested in each other’s lives, something his father confirms when Jared asks. **Just do what you’re supposed to do, and keep yourself out of trouble, Jared**. It’s not until later that he wonders if he took his father’s words too literally. The more he keeps away from the doctors and nurses, and turns down their invites and extensions, the more they seem to grow annoyed with him. One of his friends and fellow residents, Chad, shrugs when Jared puts this to him and tells Jared that they’ll get over it. _  
  
 _Everything changes one day when he finds himself at the hospital, caught in the middle of an altercation involving one of the senior doctors. Jared’s not even sure what the guy’s name is, but he’s seen him around a couple of times. Rather, he’s_ **seen**   _him. Hot is an understatement. Before Jared knows what’s happening, he’s cleaning blood off the guy’s face, pointedly avoiding bright, green eyes and pink, voluptuous lips while trying his hardest not to do something stupid. That’s kind of hard when his heart is thumping in his chest. The air is charged as finally looks down at Jensen (he catches sight of the doctor’s name on his ID badge)._  
  
 _Shortly afterwards, Jensen laughs at something he says, and Jared falls right there and then. Suddenly, Jensen’s in front of him, and green eyes look right into his. And then, Jensen kisses him. It takes Jared a few seconds to get with the program, but once he does it’s nothing short of amazing. Suddenly, Jensen pulls away, unable to meet his eyes._  
  
 _Jared feels his heart sinking._  
  
 _“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have—thanks for helping me out,” Jensen pauses, and Jared gives him a confused look. “I’ll…I’ll see you around.”_  
  
 _Jared flinches as the door slams behind him._

 

  
The in-between begins with Jared hitting rock bottom.  
  
 _He wakes up in a hospital bed to find his Dad looking at him sadly. Sad probably isn’t the right descriptor, but it’s all his tired brain can come up with, just like the only thing he seems to be able to say is ‘sorry’._  
  
 _His dad doesn’t go into any elaborate speeches. He just says that all he wants is for Jared to be happy._  
  
 _-_  
  
 _Rehab is rehab. He talks until he’s blue in the face, about anything and everything. And once, he talks about Jensen._  
  
 _-_  
  
 _Jared’s already made the decision to go back to CRT when Chad lets slip that Jensen and Jeff aren’t dating anymore. From the blank look on Chad’s face when Jared tries to get more info, he’s known for a while. He’d broken down once, and told Chad everything, even the part about being in love with someone he’s only ever had the one conversation with._  
  
 _Chad doesn’t outright say that he thinks that Jared’s feelings are irrational, but Jared knows._  
  
 _-_  
  
 _The first time Jared sits down and thinks **I should not have come back**_ _is long after the first email arrives. Sure the emails are hurtful, spiteful and all that shit, but is he surprised? Not really._  
  
 _The only thing he cares about is Jensen; with such ferocity that he begins to wonder if Chad was right, if he shouldn’t have come back._  
  
 _He can’t keep telling himself that there’s something here; he can’t keep letting Jensen yank his heart out, again and again. And after the email about them in the elevator, his heart is well and truly yanked the fuck out._  
  
 _But Jensen comes for him, and Jared lets himself believe. He lets himself have what he’s wanted for the longest time._  
  
 _-_  
  
 _The cracks start to appear early on. Jared knows that what Jensen feels for him isn’t even close to being what he feels for Jensen. Jared’s the kind of person who thinks and thinks and thinks until he can’t anymore whereas Jensen’s the kind of person who shoves things down and buries them._  
  
 _It keeps on going like that, but all Jared can think is **Jensen’s still here**_.  
  
-  
  
 _Sometimes it feels like he has half of Jensen, while the other half is scattered in pieces somewhere._  
  
 _It’s not Jared’s place to put him back together, but Jared doesn’t think he’s doing well at holding him up either._  
  
 _Chad asks him why he’s waiting._  
  
 _“Waiting for what?” he asks._  
  
 _Chad sighs, a sound that Jared’s become very accustomed to. “Waiting for him to break your heart again.”_  
  
 _“I’m not.”_  
  
 _-_  
  
 _“I warned you,” Chad says, eons later, when Jared finally has finally had enough. He’s leaving. Leaving Jensen and their broken relationship behind. He ignores Chad and wonders if Jensen ever loved him._  
  
 _Jared thinks he did, and that’s the problem._  
  
 _If anything, their love was like a warning sign._

 

  
It ended with a knock on his door.  
  
Jensen stands there for the longest time, sitting on the front step, and Jared flips between staring through the peephole and leaning against the door with his eyes closed, pretending that he’s somewhere else.  
  
Jared waits for Jensen to leave, like Jensen always does.  
  
Except Jensen doesn’t leave this time.  
  
Jared relents eventually, and steps outside to join Jensen on the step.  
  
“What do you want?” he asks, deliberately keeping his eyes off Jensen. Curtains twitch across the street, and Jared wonders what they look like: two lost souls, or two guys who are confused and in love?  
  
“Do you want the short answer or the long answer?” Jensen replies, because nothing is ever straightforward with him.  
  
“The short one,” Jared says. The sooner the conversation is over, the better.  
  
“What I want,” Jensen says, “is you.” Jared’s treacherous heart jumps, his stomach flips, and butterflies form the way they seem to whenever he’s near Jensen. But he’s not following his heart this time; he’s following his mind.  
  
His mind says,  **run the fuck away.**  
  
 **You already did that,** his heart responds,  **and he followed you.**  
  
“You’re an asshole,” Jared says aloud, suddenly very interested in a loose thread at the hem of his jeans.  
  
“I know,” Jensen agrees, turning to face Jared. “And I know that I screwed up, and that I hurt you. But I love you, Jared. I miss you.”  
  
“Is this your way of controlling what happens with us?” Jared can hear the anger in his tone, but he can’t keep it at bay. There’s too much that he’s held back, too many things that he let Jensen dictate. “That’s all it is with you. You have to be in control, all the time, consequences be damned.”  
  
“Maybe you’re right,” Jensen says. “But I’m not trying to control anything now; I can leave right this second, and never come back. Or…maybe we can give this a another chance and I’ll try to do better.”  
  
“What do you say?”  
  
Jared’s only response is the subtle shake of his head. Jensen leaves.  
  
-  
  
An hour after that, there’s another knock on his door.  
  
“What about now?” Jensen asks. Jared stares at him.  
  
-  
  
“Now?”  
  
“You can’t be serious?” Jared says, and damn if there isn’t something akin to amusement in his voice.  
  
“I’ve never been more serious about anything.” Jensen looks it. Serious, that is. And, the next time Jared shuts the door; he actually stops and thinks, would it be so bad?  
  
-  
  
“What about now?” Jensen looks a little tired, but Jared can see the determined glint in his eyes. He gives Jensen a bottle of water. Jensen smiles at Jared like he’s given him the world.  
  
“What’s so different about today?” Jared asks. “Can’t you give me some time to think about it?”  
  
“I can definitely do that,” Jensen says, and Jared gets the feeling that he just walked right into that one.  
  
-  
  
Another hour. Another knock.  
  
-  
  
“This is ridiculous.” But Jared’s not annoyed, and he’s not angry.  
  
“Have dinner with me?” Jensen asks.  
  
Jared lets him inside. The first thing Jensen does is ask where the bathroom is.  
  
“You’re not going to give up, are you?” he asks, when Jensen returns.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“After we kissed, the first time, you didn’t forget about me, you waited and you came back,” Jensen says. “Our first fleeting moment and you didn’t give up, not until I pushed and pushed. So now it’s my turn to not give up on you.”  
  
The words hit Jared harder than they should—apparently the defences he’s spent months building up don’t exist. Jensen still has a place in his heart, and when it comes down to the battle between his mind and his heart, Jared thinks his heart has got this one.  
  
“Some people would call what you’re doing harassment.” The words leave Jared before he can stop them, and Jensen stills. He can tell that Jensen’s thinking about how this – them – started, about Jeff and that whole ordeal. Jensen steps back; it’s a small one, but a step back nonetheless.  
  
“Well,” Jensen says slowly. “Is that what you think this is?”  
  
Jared doesn’t know how to say that Jensen’s nothing like Jeff, that he knows that Jensen would never try and push him into something. So he doesn’t say anything. Instead he gravitates closer towards Jensen, but the moment isn’t charged or sexual. He draws Jensen into a gentle hug, tightening his hold as Jensen’s stubble brushes against his cheek  
  
“I love you,” Jensen says, again.  
  
Jared relaxes into the embrace and finally gives in, like he knew he would all along. “I love you too.”  
  
It could turn out to be the wrong decision, a mistake—history repeating itself. But Jared knows better than most people that sometimes, you just have to put the past behind you, focus on the present and hope that your future’s what you dreamed of.  
  
It didn’t quite look like this in Jared’s head, but the reality is even better.  
  
Whether or not it lasts is irrelevant.

 

  
So, the path doesn’t really end with Jensen knocking on Jared’s door.  
  
 _It starts all over again._

 

  
  
**_Fin._ **   


* * *

  
Thank you so much for reading!  <3  
- _bh_.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, writing my first big bang was a piece of cake compared to this one. Seriously, this story pretty much kicked my ass. Originally it was supposed to be a sort of fun, light hearted fic, but then it turned into an angsty mess, so I said to myself, "okay fine, angst it is!", but then it refused to cooperate with me. For a while, I was considering dropping out because I didn't really have a back-up story that I could flesh out in time for the deadline (except for a Power Rangers AU, that I'm pretty sure no one wants to read, ever!) and I was really struggling with this. But I somehow managed to persevere and months and months (and a silly 10k drawer fic to stop me from sinking further into writer's block) later it finally came together and I'm just so very glad that I got it done. And...I thought I'd have more to say than that but apparently I don't. :P
> 
> I would like to say a huge thank you to [dahlia94](http://dahlia94.livejournal.com) for the fantastic art and waiting patiently for me to finish this thing! Please go and look at her art! :)
> 
> Thank you to my betas [haisai_andagii](http://haisai-andagii.livejournal.com) (not only did she help to make my fic as good as it could be, she listened to me ramble excessively about Tom Hardy (and lots of other random things!), which automatically makes her awesome, and secondly walking_tornado for being great and pointing out all my plot errors and grammar mistakes. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Thank you to Becky for reading an unfinished draft and giving me feedback even though her computer is/was slowly dying.
> 
> Thanks also to [ace_p](http://ace-p.livejournal.com), [anon_fan](http://anon-fan.livejournal.com) for the encouragement and help, and **kelleigh** for the last minute epilogue inspiration! Also, **dear_tiger** for helping with some of the medical terminology and everyone at **omgspnbigbang**.
> 
> Thank you to **wendy** and **thehighwaywoman** for running this challenge again.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art ~~Our Love is Like a Warning Sign](https://archiveofourown.org/works/941359) by [Dahlia-The Artist (Dahlia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dahlia/pseuds/Dahlia-The%20Artist)




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